Reviews with content warning for Dementia - Every Heart a Doorway

First of all, if the premise is interesting to you, go ahead and give it a go! It’s short enough that I think it’s worth the read. This is a well beloved book and I seem to be of unpopular opinion. So go for it and come to your own conclusions.

What I liked:

-the premise,

-the inner thoughts of the characters. (BEAUTIFUL writing here. So many good lines.)

-the (attempt at) diversity.

What I didn’t like:

I’m gonna get pretty critical here because this book has gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback.Therefore, I don’t think the negative aspects of this review will have much impact on a book that is not BAD and doesn’t deserve hate. I don’t want this review to dissuade anyone to read it. I just think that it could have been better executed.

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The murder mystery:

This didn’t work for me. It didn’t add any character development, and it wasn’t suspenseful or thrilling. It almost felt like the author just wanted to make the book more horrifying and gory because she likes horror and gore. I don’t know what the purpose was. Maybe it was to show how these twisted worlds affected the minds of the children who inhabited them? If that’s the case...did we really need a WHOLE murder mystery plot? Wasn’t there a shorter, less time consuming way to show the wickedness of some of these worlds? I’m not against horror or gore, but the whodunnit just didn’t work for me in this story. The book simply wasn’t long enough to do it well AND tackle the other themes the author wanted to address.

The mystery was solved like and read like a middle grade mystery. It didn’t fit at all with the gore and horror and (minor) sexual content that was included. This kind of juxtaposition of writing style and content COULD be interesting... but for me, the execution was lacking.

The dialogue:

The dialogue between characters felt very contrived. I never felt like I was reading real dialogue. I was always hyper aware that the author was the one manufacturing these conversations. Another reviewer said it well: “it read like a diversity PSA”. I would add that it also read like a sex positivity PSA. It didn’t feel like the characters were talking to each other. It felt like the author was talking to the readers and educating us about feminism and gender/sexuality identity.

The racial diversity:

There was one Latino character and one Japanese character. They were both a little token-y for me.

A Latino whose fantasy world is Dia de Los Muertos? If he doesn’t feel at home in this (our) world, why would that be a world he would have been attracted to? It seemed like an excuse to use the aesthetic of dancing skeletons.

And the Japanese girl was a bit of a caricature as well. As another reviewer described her as, “a (literal) manic pixie dream girl”.

Other thoughts:

(I’m not gonna speak on the ace rep because I read the author is on the ace spectrum so I don’t feel like it’s my place to speak on that except to say it’s great that we have an ace character. There’s definitely not enough in our media and I appreciate it and think it’s important.)

I did like the way that kade talked about his own trans identity and the way that it connected to his experience in his Prism world. However I found the discussion that Nancy and Sumi had afterwards fell victim to that diversity PSA writing.

I don’t want to be over critical because I think the intentions were good. More authors need to be making these attempts at including a diverse cast of characters and tackling these issues (and improve and learn from the feedback they get from reviewers).

I don’t fault the author for the attempt, but for me, it was sloppy and...a little heavy handed and on the nose. The diversity was explained to us, rather than weaved into the story.

(But perhaps there are many people who still need that direct textbook explanation. I feel like I am personally beyond that necessity in my own journey of self education, but can admit that society as a whole isn’t there yet.)

I think this would have worked for a middle grade novel, or even YA; but this book is categorized as adult fiction. So I would have appreciated a little more nuance. Perhaps if there hadn’t been the unnecessary murder plot, there could have been time to do these characterizations more gracefully. I think the author tried to put too much into too such a short book. They either needed to strip it down, or write a longer book.

Another specific thing I want to address was the explanation for why more girls are pulled into these worlds than boys.

The author’s explanation was that “boys will be boys” is a self fulfilling prophecy and that its easy for girls to disappear because society cares more about what happens to our boys.

While I appreciate the commentary the author was trying to make here, this explanation fell flat for me. It just didn’t make sense and having Nancy say “oh that makes sense” didn’t make it make more sense to me.

My friend pointed out that it would have been more powerful (AND make more sense) if brown and black children were the ones who got lost more easily.

My Rating System:

1. DNF*

2. I didn’t like it, but I finished it. Don’t recommend.

3. I liked aspects of it, would recommend to some.

4. Great book, would recommend to most.

5. My favorites**

* I don’t rate all DNFs

** subject to bias and not necessarily something I would recommend to others

Content Warnings

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