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Book's first ever friend group, before running away to join BFDI, were... not so great. She never was one to be particularly into adventures, but hey, objects were meant to have friends. So even if those friends never respected her, it was fine. Even if they dragged her away from reading and being overall "nerdy" for adventures, even when she spoke about not wanting to, it was what was meant to be. But one day, she got a bit too sick of her "friends" treatment of her. They had crushed her boundaries into nothing more than fine dust, and at that point, she fled.
For someone with such a toxic start to friends, the last thing you'd probably expect is to join into a game show. But that's exactly what Book did. She met the Announcer, right after fleeing from her "friends", and was asked if she wanted to join this "BFDI" thing she had never heard of. She had no where to go, so she said yes. She didn't make it into the original season, but she would make it into it's second: BFDIA. It's there where she would be fully introduced to FreeSmart. Pencil, Ruby, Bubble, Match, and Ice Cube. Book and Ice Cube were "alternates", not part of the main friend group. But that's... fine enough. She'd just have to work her way up.
Then she won BFDIA. How? She had no clue. But her role in FreeSmart changed. They only saw her for this victory. And suddenly, FreeSmart started to remind her a lot of that old friend group. But Ice Cube was different. She saw Book for more than that win. And Book felt a need to protect Ice Cube from bad friends. So they left in BFB to join a different team. A team with Taco.
Book, at this point, had only really known one type of friend. All she knew was that one simple thing. Friends crush each other, hurt each other, make them feel low. And Book refused to let Ice Cube feel that way. So, once Taco started showing those signs, Book called Taco out for it. What Book didn't realize, however, was how, in retrospect, she ended up going so far one way she went around and became exactly what she didn't want to be. She became so focused on preventing Ice Cube from being hurt that she, in fact, hurt Ice Cube. She went so far one way to avoid toxicity that she became toxic.
And now, now Book was a ship with no sail, out in the middle of the sea. She had tried so hard to do everything right, to be a good friend, but she tried too hard. Like trying so, so hard to row a boat, that the oar breaks. Instead of protecting Ice Cube, Book simply hurt her, and Taco too. She tried to fix it, but that seemed to fail. The only thing that seemed to work now was to respect the two's different decisions. To let Taco chase after the BFB, and to let Ice Cube have space.
But without anyone to anchor too, no matter how harmful they may be, Book couldn't exactly state a place to go now. She would simply be competing in TPOT once it started up. But until then, she is a ship with no sail, a ship with no anchor, and a ship with no oar, simply a plank floating through the sea. And on this plank, she reflects on what she did wrong, what she can do to improve, and everything that led her here.
Clouds roll into the distance, but Book doesn't notice. Her time until TPOT started was going to be rocky, but she would persist. She persisted sailing the sea with an anchor down (her first ever friend group), a torn sail (FreeSmart), and a broken oar (her own mistakes within BFB). What's to say sailing without any of these would be any different? It's just another challenge in Book's rough life. Maybe one day, though, would her ship be repaired.
Maybe that day, to her, would be the day that TPOT started back up.