Monday, July 01, 2024

2024 book 110

 Kristin Cashore's There is a Door in this Darkness

I saw some discourse recently about how "there's no pandemic novels" (which, have you read Louise Erdrich, bro?), but hey, here's a pandemic novel for ya. I actually had no idea what this was about, I just like Kristin Cashore, so I perhaps wasn't expecting a novel set in fall 2020 that constantly talks about masking and the election. Too real. Very stressful. But GREAT characters and very readable! So the main character is teen Wilhelmina, who always spent summers with her great-aunts (one biological, the other two in a throuple with her), at least until one of them died of cancer. And then her best friends formed a pandemic bubble without her. And now she's seeing weird mysterious signs and sparkles and keeps running into a cute boy from school. I am not at all into teen romances in books but this was super cute (it's not a romance novel per se, much more coming of age, but the romance is a thing). Sweet story but I did have a hard time stomaching 2020 flashbacks in light of current events. A-.


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