**This blog contains adult language and description of...ahem...adult activities. It is meant to be read by adults only.**
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to have the story completely and utterly spoiled.
Book Description: Shirley would do anything for her students. Even flirt her way into the closed off basement of her school. But her students might not be the only ones learning a thing or two when she finds a sentient dictionary that can redefine what love means to her.
This book was published in 2025 and this is my first time reading it. I’m pretty sure it’s my first time reading this author as well which is always fun. This book is part of a larger series about the town which seems to be inhabited by all kinds of supernatural creatures. I took a look at the others and it doesn’t seem like you have to read them in order so I picked the one that sounded most like it belonged here.\
Why is that house on the cover so short? It doesn't seem like it's far away since she's walking on the road in front of it. And why do her legs look like that? Yikes.
We begin with our protagonist Shirley in the office of her boss, Principal Bailey. They discuss a couple of parental complaints and then Shirley asks if her request for new bunsen burners has been approved. I assumed this meant she was a middle or high school teacher but we learn a few paragraphs later that she teaches in an elementary school. They never let us use bunsen burners in elementary school. Anyway, Bailey informs her that there is no budget for additional classroom supplies and that the school board has asked that they do less experiments in general since most of the students are supernatural in some way and things get out of hand quickly.
Shirley leaves his office disheartened. Marge, the school secretary, tells Shirley that Mike the janitor has keys to the basement. Marge is dead, by the way. I have no idea if she’s a ghost or a zombie and LePlant doesn't really make it clear. Shirley doesn’t know why Marge is bringing up the basement but then clues into the fact that there might be supplies stored down there. No one except Mike has been in the basement for years. Apparently a group of pre-teen witches conducted some kind of séance or something down there that went really awry and now the basement is kept chained shut.
Shirley meets with Mike right away and takes advantage of the fact that he has a crush on her to flirt her way into the basement. She tells him that she’s doing a mapping unit with her students and their first project is going to be drawing a map of the school. She wants to peek down into the basement so she can give them an accurate representation of the area. He’s reluctant but she puts on a damsel in distress act and asks him to lend her his manly protection while she looks around. It works and they head to the heavily chained door.
The stairway down is full of dust and cobwebs and Shirley is a little freaked out by how creepy it is. Immediately she spies a box labeled “5G Sci” and gets all excited. She yanks it off the shelf and accidentally dislodges a box above it. Everything starts to slide and the upper box opens. A large heavy book tumbles out, hitting Shirley in the chest and knocking her flat down on her back. She lies there trying to catch her breath for a minute.
The book is called “Meryham-Debster Unofficial Dictionary” and it weighs a ton. She manages to get out from under it and asks Mike if he’d go get her some water. He runs upstairs, leaving her free to search the other box. She finds all kinds of usable supplies and starts stuffing them in her bag and under her sweater. When she hears Mike return, She grabs the dictionary and uses it to hide the safety goggles hidden under her clothes. When Mike asks her what she’s doing with the book, she discreetly rips a page from it and then holds it up, saying the book got damaged when it fell on her and she wants to repair it before she returns it. At first he doesn’t go for it but then she points out that if anyone finds the book with a torn out page, they’ll know someone was in the basement and they’ll know Mike let them in. He gulps and agrees to let her take it.
Shirley heads home, listening to a smutty audio book on the way. As the elf in the story is….ahem….partaking in a feast with his pretty human mate (if you know what I mean), Shirley hears a deep voice say “Damm”. Yep. With two ‘m’s’. Sigh. She can’t figure out where the voice came from but her windows are down so she thinks it was someone passing by. She goes back to the scene and then hears a deep voice say “Damn” again. This time spelled correctly.
Shirley freaks out a little and starts to search for her phone – presumably to turn the audio book off. A voice tells her to keep her eyes on the road. She looks down and sees “a floating face inside the dictionary”.
That’s going to make a hilarious picture in my book journal.
She screams and loses control of the car. He screams. They crash into a tree.
The paramedics show up and she fully tells them that she crashed because her dictionary started talking to her and they just give her a clean bill of health and leave. I guess that's a perk of living in a paranormal town. Shirley checks on the dictionary. He starts going off on her for tearing his page earlier. Dude, we’ve moved past that now. Keep up. She buckles him into the seat and then drives off? After crashing into a tree? Was she going 2mph? That car shouldn’t be drivable.
Whatever.
She decides that the dictionary is “handsome for a book” whatever that means. I’m starting to think Shirley might have breathed in a little too much formaldehyde.
Shirley and the book go on to have an argument about whether the tree in question jumped out in front of the car. Apparently this is a thing that can happen in Ghostlight Falls. Buildings and such move all the time. Shirley’s pretty used to it but I guess the dictionary hasn’t seen the outside world in a long time.
Shirley goes on to tell us that she moved to Ghostlight Falls to be with her girlfriend Twyla. They’ve broken up but they still live together because they’re waiting out their lease. They also share a dog named Melon who likes to bite people and eat papers.
Shirley puts dictionary on a high shelf and then takes Melon for his nightly walk. When she gets back, dictionary is hovering in the air. Apparently it can fly. Shirley finally gets around to asking him how he exists and he says he was a teacher named Richard before he was a book. He walked into the basement supply room one day and saw a couple of kids doing some kind of magical ritual. Before he could do anything, they cursed him into the book.
{{{Note from future me: make note that he says there were only two kids in the room.}}}
Richard asks Shirley to flip through his pages (that wasn’t a euphemism). She does and finds a doodle next to the word ‘adore’. It says “ZB + CH 4EVA” and it’s glowing gold. He says “Booyah! Let’s try it.” but…..try what? The author doesn’t explain it. All of a sudden both Richard and Shirley are all hot and bothered and she says they shouldn’t “shoot the horny ray anymore” but I have no idea what happened. It’s like paragraphs were just left out.
We just move on from there. Shirley goes back to normal but Richard is still feeling “warm”. She tells him that she’s willing to kiss him for science. She kisses the book and, at first, it’s just like kissing a poster but then she starts to feel him kissing her back. There’s a stretching and a pop and then she can feel his tongue in her mouth. She fondles his pages but Melon bites her ankle before it can get really good.
Shirley feeds Melon and then starts to eat cold Chinese food out of the fridge. She describes it to Richard and he moans. He says that’s how he eats. He gets full from her words.
This book is really bad, y’all. I’m struggling.
He asks her if she’ll start the audio book again but she finished it while she was walking Melon. She tells him they can start book two tomorrow. He’s cool with that. He also wants her to describe a cupcake to him tomorrow. This is riveting content.
The next morning Shirley wakes up to get ready for work. Richard is sleeping on the couch and she sees that his ribbon bookmark is out of the pages. She wakes him up and then tucks it back in. He tells her that she essentially just grabbed his “other tongue” and now I never want to touch one of those ribbon bookmarks again. I mean, my book journal has one of those. Is it licking me every time I move it? I’m traumatized. I’m going to send LePlant my therapy bill.
Shirley takes Richard to work and lets him sit on her desk. While the kids work, she talks to him which is just an unhinged thing to do in a room full of observant children. One of the students notices she’s talking to a dictionary and then comes close enough to see Richard’s face. Shirley is prepared to tell them that he’s some kind of new tablet but he just floats up in the air and announces he’s their new classroom helper.
Okay.
Everyone loves Richard. Kids keep coming from other classrooms to talk to him. Shirley’s after school tutoring program is full because everyone wants to see him. On the way home, Richard says he’s pretty sure he taught high school math before he was cursed but his memories are still foggy. Shirley suggests they talk to Marge who has been at the school forever to see if she remembers Richard.
Twyla is home when they get back to the house. Shirley isn’t ready to see her so she takes Richard out for dinner instead. She describes everything she eats to him in great detail and he does a lot of moaning. I’m guessing no one else in the restaurant finds that weird.
They go to a park afterwards and talk for awhile. Shirley says she needs to look for more “magic doodles” before he goes back into the classroom. They don’t want to take a chance of one of the students discovering one and….activating something I guess. The author STILL HASN’T EXPLAINED IT. Richard agrees and she begins to flip through his pages.
By the word “capture” she finds a doodle of boxes and stars. By the word “erect” she finds a couple of penis drawings. He asks her to “activate” them and she does. I guess. We aren’t told what she does. He asks her to close the book and when she does, two penises have grown out of the cover.
I’m not drawing THAT in my book journal.
She asks him if he’s up to more experimentation. You know, just for science. She puts him in the backseat and then takes off her tights. She straddles him and then his ribbon bookmark….ahem….starts to clean the kitchen (if you know what I mean). It goes on for pages and pages. Then she….ahem….puts a banana in her fruit salad (if you know what I mean). This also goes on for pages. We do get this gem though: “This damn dictionary has fucked the words right out of me.” That’s just brilliant prose right there.
In case you’re wondering, only one of his….ahem….clam diggers (if you know what I mean) goes inside her. He uses his bookmark to….ahem….tug the other slug (if you know what I mean).
They finish and then she draws some kind of doodle on one of the ‘M’ pages that lets him activate a stick figure body so he can have arms. LePlant doesn’t bother to tell us what word the doodle goes with but I’m guessing maybe ‘man’?
YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN THINGS, LePLANT! IT’S YOUR JOB TO EXPLAIN HOW THE MAGIC WORKS IN YOUR MAGICAL STORY!
Twyla takes it all in stride and says he can stay if he figures out how to pay some rent.
The next day, Mike meets her before school to demand she put the dictionary back. She says she’s using it in her classroom. He says she can have one more day but they’re putting it back that evening before anyone discovers it’s missing. She’s dismayed.
They go straight to Marge. She looks at Richard and says: “Mr Diction! You are awfully late.”
His name is Dick Diction?
Okay.
Richard protests that he was trapped but she says he should have tried harder to put in his notice. She pulls out his final check which has just been hanging out in the filing cabinet for 30 years. Shirley asks for more information so Marge takes them into Bailey’s office and digs out a yearbook from the year Richard disappeared. She gives it to Shirley and then warns her that Richard isn’t the only one who disappeared that year and she might want to be careful.
They go through the yearbook during one of Shirley’s breaks and she’s stunned to see a picture of Mike in it. She’s confused because he should be much older than he is if he was a student 30 years ago. Richard recognizes him instantly as the person who cursed him.
Shirley gives Richard to the art teacher (Cami) for safekeeping for the rest of the day. She’s covered him a dustjacket from one of her books in an effort to disguise him. She hands Cami a description of a drawing she wants done on one of Richard’s pages and then she goes on with her day. Mike shows up after the final bell and demands to know where the book is. She confronts him with what she knows and the chapter ends.
The next chapter begins with them at the basement door but LePlant doesn’t bother to tell us if Shirley went there willingly or if she was forced. Mike tells her that he was in a coven 30 years ago. They were in the basement doing a spell to help them with their exams when Richard walked in and something in their spell made him disappear. Mike passed out and when he woke up, he was 10 years younger and the only other person in the room was fellow coven member Bailey. Everyone else had disappeared.
Wait. I thought Richard said there were only two kids in the basement. Keep track of your story, LePlant. It seriously isn't that hard. Make notes or something.
Bailey appears behind them. Shirley asks him about the missing faculty members that Marge alluded to. All he’ll really say is that he was persistent and he perfected his magic. He offers to take Shirley to see the other missing teachers but then Cami and Richard appear. Cami has drawn him a much better – functioning – body. Richard slaps Bailey. He asks Cami and Shirley to step outside so he can activate whatever the ‘capture’ doodle is.
This is so fucking dumb.
They walk out. There’s a loud noise. Richard comes to get them. They walk in again.
It’s seriously written almost exactly like that. Just four sentences. LePlant explains NOTHING.
It turns out ‘capture’ activates a large metal cage which traps both Mike and Bailey. Cami says she’ll go get Marge and maybe they can investigate what else might be in that basement. Or who else. Richard and Shirley leave. Richard wraps his new arms around Shirley and starts to fly her home. She gets all horny on the way because his ‘spine’ is pressed into her….ahem….pink paradise cove (if you know what I mean). Richard stops on some random person’s roof so Shirley can take off her tights and her panties. She just leaves them there on the roof and they take off again.
Yuck. I would be so pissed to find someone's dirty panties on my roof. Gross.
In flight, Richard uses his bookmark to gets things all nice and ready and then….well….both of his...ahem...intrusion protrusions (if you know what I mean) find their way into separate holes. With very little prep.
Then….
“I thought Ghostlight Falls was a beautiful place before, but it looks even better when your pussy and ass are filled with cock.”
It’s so profound.
The book ends with them finding another trapped teacher in a book. Maybe there’s s sequel? I don’t know. I won’t be reading it. I don’t see the point when the author doesn’t really bother to explain her story to me.
This is probably one of the most boring entries on this blog. It wasn’t one of those ‘so bad it’s funny’ books. It was just bad. And it didn’t have a fun story because it didn’t have much story at all. So much potential and so much disappointment. I should probably just delete this without posting it but why should I be the only one who suffers?
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