Oh My, I Messed Up the Story

Abby went through the next year in a blur. She forced herself to keep studying because it was the only thing that kept her going. She stopped spending time with her friends and spent way too much time looking through old memories of her sister.

Photo albums. Home videos. Katie's diaries and social media accounts. It was impossible to accept that she was truly gone even though Abby didn't get her daily random texts anymore.

Graduation was especially hard. A few of her aunts and uncles had come out for the occasion but it wasn't the same. Her parents should have been there. Katie should have been there.

Losing her parents had been horrible but at least she had Katie to hold her together. Who was supposed to hold her together now that she had lost her best friend?

Abby got a well-paid graphic design job right off the bat and buried herself in her work. But when she wasn't able to do that, she decided to finally get to the list of things Katie had always bugged her about watching and reading that she never had time for.

Comics. Novels. TV shows. She spent several months consuming all that media and frequenting stopping to sob as she wondered which parts her sister had wanted her to see the most. She only recommended things she was certain Abby would like.

Once that list was complete, Abby felt like she had lost her sister all over again. There was nothing left that Katie was telling her to do.

That was how she ended up desperately checking her sister's old Goodreads account for every book she had ever bothered to post a review for, both good and bad. She found herself frequently agreeing with the reviews Katie had left behind.

Even though not all of the books were her cup of tea, Abby felt a little closer to her sister again. She was a bit confused when she got to From Pastry Chef to Princess though. For the first time, she didn't agree with Katie's review.

'If you're looking for a cute, cliché fantasy love story with 2-D characters and minimal world-building this is the book for you. (I literally only read it because someone left it behind at the doctor's office and I was stuck waiting for three hours)'

What about these characters was 2-D in her mind? Sure, Prince Alpheus had been pretty boring at first but Catherine du Pont was a riot. Watching him fall for her had actually been pretty fun even though she was frustratingly resistant to him.

The book was in his point of view, which didn't make a lot of sense. It seemed more like Catherine, who preferred to be called Katie, was the main character. But the synopsis on the back of the novel had clearly indicated this book was about Marcy.

Abby's heart ached as she read because this Katie reminded her so much of her own. Tears ran down her face as she laughed at some of the things this girl said and did. It was a fantasy novel but she didn't act like she belonged in it at all.

She was surprised that things like pizza and doughnuts were included in the book, especially since none of the other characters seemed to know anything about them. There were a lot of inconsistencies like that.

The book's Katie was a know-it-all bookworm with a weird sense of humor just like her sister. And she seemed oddly like one of those transmigrated characters in the comics from the list Katie gave her even though everyone else truly believed she was Catherine du Pont.

Abby became more and more confused as the story went on. The only reason she hadn't stopped reading at all was because she felt oddly drawn to this character and what she was dealing with. contemporary romance

More than halfway through the book, she read something so shocking that she dropped it slipped right through her fingers and onto the ground.

"My name was Katrina Pullman but I had gone by Katie my entire life. I am not from Annalaias or any of the surrounding nations. I am from another world in a place called Arizona. Everything I ever said was from the country…was actually from my home.

"All of my knowledge came from things I learned back home. Jellyfish…politics…card games…hat looms….I want to be a librarian because that was my job before. I died in a carriage accident and somehow woke up in Catherine du Pont's body."

All of the odd things about Katie finally fit together in her husband's mind as she continued to speak but Abby felt like she might pass out after checking the next several pages multiple times to be sure she wasn't hallucinating.

Was this some kind of sick joke? How would this author have even known that Katrina Pullman died in a car accident? Let alone that she had lived in Arizona and had a sister named Abby?

There were too many specific details from Katie's life in this book. The author had to have known her but that didn't make sense either. Katie had been such a private person. She spent all of her free time alone or video chatting with her little sister when Abby wasn't swamped with homework or had other plans.

She frantically flipped the book over to check who the author was. Janine Everett. Abby had never heard of her. She wanted to angrily demand how her sister had ended up inside this author's story—was there no respect for the dead anymore?—but she was compelled to finish it first to see if there were any more weird facts about Katie in there.

Abby ended up rereading the entire book twice, skipping over unimportant parts that didn't specifically mention anything weird or different about Katie. She wrote down every single instance in a notebook, with page and paragraph numbers for reference.

The next thing she did was track that author down. She had a website—apparently this wasn't the only book she had ever published—and on it was an email address for fans to contact her through.

She sent a very strongly worded message demanding to know what was going on with this book. To her surprise, the author wanted to meet with her face to face so they set up a time to video chat.

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