Yuffie's Book Reviews

Every Heart a Doorway - by Seanan McGuire

This book was recommended to me by a lot of people, so I wanted to have high hopes for it. The premise sounded great: openly asexual protagonist, following the aftermath of kids who are sent off to other worlds, have their adventures, and then have to deal with returning to the mundane real world. It could've been SO good, but this book was underwhelming and so disappointing.

The writing was generally nothing great, pretty average and mediocre. There were a couple passages describing the MC's time in the Underworld and how she adored the stillness there that were good, but overall, the writing was nothing to get excited about. It was pretty superficial and failed to dig into deeper, more layered themes. Ideas were stated plainly and the treatment of the asexual and trans characters was so generic and heavyhanded. "I'm asexual and here is the generic definition of sex-repulsion (which is a sub-type of asexuality, but not the definition of it as the book makes us believe), even though this honestly has nothing to do with the story whatsoever, but I'm going to mention my asexuality several times throughout the book because reasons." There were no actual conflicts or consequences around the characters' sexuality, despite how often they were mentioned and the force-feeding of "look at all the problems I've had in the past regarding this! It has nothing to do with the story now, but I'll mention it out of the blue anyway, just to prove how asexual I am!" I was so, so excited to finally see some representation for asexuality in a novel, but this portrayal left me cringing.

Another huge problem was the lack of any character arc. The author seemed to attempt to teach the MC an important lesson, but it honestly didn't show, and nothing she did throughout the story actually led to this "epiphany", which wasn't really an epiphany. The character was struggling to survive in the real world after being in the underworld for some time, and then at the end she's happily, deus ex machina'd back. Like, what lesson did she learn? What was the point of this story? The events of a story should cause a character to learn something important about themselves or the world, change something in them, which results in a resolution. But this book didn't have that. She (kind of) helped solve a murder mystery, and then her portal opened because she was now "sure", whatever that means. It wasn't handled well.

The final major issue I had was the lack of challenges for the MC. The biggest issues she faced, through the premise, were having to return to parents who didn't want her, but wanted the old her, and being stuck in a world where no one understands. But we never see any of that. The book starts with her coming to a sheltered bubble of a school full of people exactly like her. There's no challenge, no major obstacle there, compared to if the story had been set in the actual real world, in her own household, dealing with people who DON'T understand her.

It disappoints me that there's so much hype and praise for this book, because the merits were far overstated. The premise is great and had so much potential, but the execution left much to be desired. The author failed to exploit that premise to its true potential, leaving me severely underwhelmed at the end. There were some intriguing moments, and I did enjoy the Frankenstein's apprentice character. The MC's experiences in the Underworld were creative as well. It wasn't a bad book, but it also wasn't great. Overall, I would recommend spending your time elsewhere.

3/5 stars