hazella_reads 's review for:

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

3.5

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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The concept of using books as objects of magical powers is good, but I was left hoping the users would do more with the books than simply hold it/use a page to activate its magical properties. Why not use a rock or a piece of jewelry or something else if that's the case? Why not have the users read passages from the books to activate it? With the exception of Cassie and to some extent Drummond, the readers don't have much of an insight in where these characters come from. As a result, they come off as a little 2-dimensional and made it harder for me to really care about them. The main villain, known only as "The Woman", is a cliché and is evil simply for being evil. I feel the author quickly threw a background story about her killing her parents and other victims so that we can all agree she's the villain. Feels lazy. Maybe I just don't like my characters that are immediately defined good/evil. It's also weird that you don't really have governments involved. You'd think that at least the CIA would have extensive knowledge of these books and be the ones actively hunting for them. I will say time travel is sometimes difficult to get right in books, but I think the author did a good job on it. Overall, it's a decent page turner.