comadivine11 's review for:

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

4.0

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There is a lot of hype surrounding this book. I would say it mostly lives up to it, but also that this novel is a bit overstated. It's good, but not life-changing. But alas, hype can be a curse because reader's will judge it more harshly if it doesn't fulfill their expectations. This book was a lot of fun and quite good. The things I liked are things like the fact that the author is obviously a passionate reader with a love of stories and language. The characters were engaging and fleshed-out. The different worlds were imaginative and the concept of worlds connected via "doors", while not new, is obviously an engaging one given how many well-loved stories have used it. I also really liked the parts telling Adelaine's story. I found Adelaine to be a more engaging character than January. Overall, a fantastic novel, especially when considering that this is Harrow's debut novel.

The story took a while to really get a full head of steam, at least for me. It didn't seem to really get moving until a little over the halfway point. My only real complaint is that this book

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plays very nice. The author never seems to take any big risks (apart from writing a novel in the first place, which is no small task, obviously). Nothing really bad happens. Very much a "happily ever after" type story.