I came across The Book of Doors while browsing my local Indigo bookstore. The inside book flap says that this novel is for readers of The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, which almost made me pass it over, but then it said that this novel is also for readers of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, which is a book that I really enjoyed reading, so I decided to give The Book of Doors a chance. I like it better than The Midnight Library, but it does not hold a candle to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. The Book of Doors is an interesting idea, but I really do not care much for certain aspects of the novel.

The Book of Doors is about a woman named Cassie Andrews who lives in New York City and works at a bookstore. One day at work, she discovers that a favourite customer has died in the store. After the paramedics take his body away, Cassie finds a book that this customer has left for her, a mysterious leather volume filled with strange words and drawings. Cassie eventually learns that this book is one of many “special books” with magical powers. The book in Cassie’s possession has the ability to turn any doorway into a portal to any location that the possessor of the book thinks of.

Cassie immediately begins playing around with this book, the Book of Doors, using it to revisit the European countries she travelled to after her grandfather, her sole parental figure, died eight years earlier. Her friend and roommate, Izzy, cautions Cassie to be careful about using the Book of Doors, but Cassie is either too naïve or selfish or stupid to listen to her, and of course Cassie’s actions come back to bite the both of them in the ass. This is because the Book of Doors is the most coveted of the special books, and there are some nefarious characters that would do anything to get their hands on it.

I found Cassie to be an uninspiring protagonist. I feel like readers are expected to like her because she is a bookworm with her head in the clouds, but I think a person can be a bookworm, a dreamer and pragmatic. She is depicted as a sad person drifting through life (who still somehow manages to afford an apartment in Manhattan with only one roommate while working at a bookstore?? In this economy??), but her motivation is completely unoriginal. Cassie is basically stuck in her grief over her grandfather’s death, and willing to screw around with everyone else’s lives for her own selfish feelings. She is not particularly intelligent, strong or brave, or has any qualities that would make her hero material, so if the idea is that she is supposed to be an everyday hero, then she has to not be motivated by her own desires. It also does not help that Brown has created a more interesting character in “the Woman”, one of the people hunting Cassie for the Book of Doors. The Woman is one of the most sadistic and horrifying villains that I have come across in literature. I was disturbed by her, but also really interested in learning her backstory and how she became the monster that she is.

The Book of Doors has a lot of potential, and because of this, I have a feeling that there will be more novels about the special books. As a lifelong reader, I love the idea of books having magical powers, but The Book of Doors really could have benefited from a stronger protagonist. However, my biggest problem with The Book of Doors is the somewhat juvenile language and banal similes. I have no idea how many times I rolled my eyes at the cringey text. It does not read like a middle-aged man wrote this novel. To be completely honest, if there is a sequel to The Book of Doors, I will not bother to read it. And next time I see a book compared favourably to The Midnight Library, that will be a definite nope for me.