The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown – Review

Published: February 13, 2024

Publisher: William Morrow

Series: N/A

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 413 (Kindle)

My Rating: 4.5 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
If you could open a door to anywhere, where would you go?

In New York City, bookseller Cassie Andrews is living an unassuming life when she is given a gift by a favourite customer. It’s a book – an unusual book, full of strange writing and mysterious drawings. And at the very front there is a handwritten message to Cassie, telling her that this is the Book of Doors, and that any door is every door.

What Cassie is about to discover is that the Book of Doors is a special book that bestows an extraordinary powers on whoever possesses it, and soon she and her best friend Izzy are exploring all that the Book of Doors can do, swept away from their quiet lives by the possibilities of travelling to anywhere they want.

But the Book of Doors is not the only magical book in the world. There are other books that can do wondrous and dreadful things when wielded by dangerous and ruthless individuals – individuals who crave what Cassie now possesses.

Suddenly Cassie and Izzy are confronted by violence and danger, and the only person who can help them is, it seems, Drummond Fox. He is a man fleeing his own demons – a man with his own secret library of magical books that he has hidden away in the shadows for safekeeping. Because there is a nameless evil out there that is hunting them all . . .

Because some doors should never be opened.

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2024 is knocking it out of the park when it comes to the portal fantasy sub-genre. The Book of Doors is the second book of the sort I’ve read this year and I loved it. It’s a wonderful, thought provoking exploration into what would happen if you could open a door to any place or even any time. I wasn’t expecting a book that would literally make me cry.

The Book of Doors follows Cassie, a young woman living in New York City and working in a bookstore. She’s going about her normal shift chatting with a favorite older customer, and when she returns to check on old Mr. Webber before closing, she finds that he’s passed away and left a small leatherbound book to her. It’s full of nonsense scribbles and drawings of doors and she accidentally discovers what the book is capable of when she’s absently daydreaming of a past trip to Italy. She and her roommate Izzy take a test drive of the book, hopping to their favorite locations around New York, but what they don’t realize is that they’re being watched and magical books are priceless, highly coveted items. 

The pair are soon violently dragged into the world of magical books, though Cassie is fortunately guided by Drummond Fox, the Librarian. Drummond has been seeking magical books to preserve and keep them from the hands of those who would seek to do evil with them. The Fox Library goes back over a century, though Drummond has had to hide it using his Book of Shadows so a psychotic book hunter known only as the woman can’t find it. The woman enjoys using her books to cause pain and suffering and her life goal is to find the Fox Library so she might attain all seventeen books held within. Cassie’s Book of Doors is the only way to get in since Drummond Fox hid it in the shadows and he insists that her book must be destroyed. 

The story seems like it would be a fairly straightforward one of collecting books, defeating the woman, and saving the day but it’s far more convoluted than that. Remember, the Book of Doors can open any door, even to the past. What actually plays out is a complicated and very well executed time travel sequence full of action and absolutely heartbreaking emotion. Cassie was raised by her grandfather, but he died of cancer years before and she goes back to visit him at one point and I cried like a baby. The emotions this book wrung from me were unexpected. 

The Book of Doors was an incredible story. I admire any book that can bring me to the emotional edge and push me over, but that can’t be all a book has to offer. This had solid friendships, a truly awful villain character, plenty of adventure, and strong women! I couldn’t put this down and I’d highly recommend it, particularly for folks who like books about books and portal fantasy!