The Book of Doors

Well, I liked the premise! Who wouldn't want literal superpowers bestowed on you through a book, right? The problem was that this book suffered some major pacing/development issues that prevented me from thoroughly enjoying myself, and it also requires the attentive reader to entirely turn off the part of the brain responsible for thinking logically about time travel implications. It was these two things that prevented me from rating the book higher, but I do have to say that I did mostly enjoy the story told. There was just a lot of telling.

Cassie works at a bookstore when an elderly regular of hers, Mr. Webber, stops by one snowy evening, exchanges some banter about world travel and The Count of Monte Cristo, and then passes away right there in the shop. In front of him, Cassie finds a mysterious book with an equally mysterious message for her right inside the cover. This was her introduction to The Book of Doors, which lets her travel anywhere (and anywhen) just by opening a door. There's other books out there with other strange and mysterious powers, and just as many people trying to get their hands on them. Cassie finds herself sucked into a power struggle she never knew existed, armed only with a book to keep her and her friends safe.

The cast of characters in this book is rather large, but don't worry, only a very few of them are actually relevant to the plot. There's an equally huge number of different books of different powers out there as well, but again, don't worry, as our heroes really only make use of two or three regularly. The author does a lot of handwaving of these other books (evidently a whole library's worth?), which was a little disappointing. The plot also moves incredibly slow in the beginning while everything's being set up, and then after it falls over the tipping point things start moving incredibly fast, which was a little problematic. It took so long for the plot to start moving, and then when it does, interesting plot points are handwaved away in a "we'll think about this later" off scene sort of way as the author barrels through their plot points to get to the end. After all the time setting things up, I expected a bit more care to be taken with the end.

And then don't get me started on all the time travel shenanigans that aren't adequately explained. DO NOT click this spoiler/read this spoiler if you're at all interested in this book (I'm not joking) (HEAVY ending spoilers here): So ultimately it was Cassie who made the books, right? But we don't actually ever talk about that and what that means or how it happens. She just saw Izzy die (but not actually), freak out, go through a door to nothing, and then.....hangs out there for months, sheds her emotions into books, and then somehow they're distributed out before everything started hundreds of years ago for everyone to fight over. She was the origin of the books, but everytime afterward that Cassie starts to think about it she waves it away as being too large to think about. Girl, you're right, but also the readers want to know wtf that was all about so we need to have a moment together, I think. It just smacked of the author having a cool idea but not really knowing how to adequately/satisfactorily explain it at the end, so we'll just have the main character not talk about it at all okay?

But if you're able to turn your brain off and want an original book superpower-themed thriller, give this one a try.