I have to say, this was pretty much the perfect book to read while having to stay home due to COVID-19. Need to escape your world for a little bit? Fall into one where you can cross thresholds into other worlds!
The Summary
In the early 1900s, a young woman searches for her place in the world after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut.
In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.
Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.
My Review
This book wasted no time pulling me in. The first chapter immediately transported me to this strange and fantastical world where you can move between worlds, and it’s exactly the kind of book I wanted to read for an escape.
This is going to be kind of a short review, because I don’t want to give anything away! This book does an excellent job at keeping you guessing. I spent a lot of time guessing and wondering at what might be coming next and how things were going to turn out.
The story’s narrator, January, does a lot of searching in this book – searching for her own sense of identity, her family, and a place where she can truly belong. She steps through a “Door” (a portal to another world) when she’s a child. She then spends many years sort of squashing the memory, until she finds a mysterious book that connects to that experience.
That’s all I’ll say on the plot…it’s too good to give away details! There’s adventure, there’s love, there’s fantasy, and a unique coming-of-age story. The writing was well done, the characters were for the most part compelling and relatable, and it all just really came together for me.
5 stars.
