The Watermark

Inception meets Stranger than Fiction in this ambitious meta adventure from Mills (The Fragments of My Father). When Jaime wins a contest to interview reclusive author Augustus Fate, he mostly hopes to impress his online crush Rachel, the woman who introduced him to Fate’s books. Fate has other plans, however. The novelist has hit on a mystical solution to his plotting problems: he kidnaps people, drugs them, and sends their consciousnesses to inhabit the characters in his novels. Transported to a fictionalized Victorian-era Oxford, Jaime obliviously lives as Thomas, a young Dickensian protagonist—until he meets beautiful governess Rachel, and they realize they’re trapped. But the only way out of Fate’s book is into someone else’s. Careening through stories, from an idealized present in Manchester to the bleak past of czarist Russia and a future full of angst and robots, Jaime and Rachel live out entire lives together in hopes of finding their way back to the only one that matters. Mills piles five books into one and, aside from a few too-cute moments, manages to largely avoid the pitfalls of writing about writing. Her fluid command of each vastly different genre serves to highlight what stays the same in each—the strengths, faults, and deep bond of Rachel and Jaime. Readers will be impressed. Agent: Dan Milachewski, UTA. (Feb.)