It feels like The Night Circus, Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Willy Wonka all rolled together, and it’s a beautiful thing. Cassie works in a bookstore and has wonderful, regular conversations with an old man who is a frequent patron. When this man dies in his chair at the bookshop and leaves Cassie a mysterious leather-bound book full of runes and drawings, she is surprised and intrigued. This is the Book of Doors, and it makes any door into every door, giving the holder the ability to go literally anywhere they imagine by simply possessing the book. Soon Cassie and her roommate Izzy are imagining all the possibilities at their fingertips—travel, exploration, adventure, all for free and as soon as they wish. But the Book of Doors is not the only magical book in existence, and there are those who would seek such books for power and malice instead of personal pleasure.
There is the Book of Light, which casts away all shadows; the Book of Pain, which gives the user the ability to render immense harm; the Book of Luck, which provides fortuitous advantages; the Book of Despair, which alters the mental state of a user; the Book of Shadows, which allows a holder to operate under cover of darkness; and so many more. Drummond Fox, also known as The Librarian, has been chasing down books to collect them and running from his own trauma for decades, and he is keen to help protect Cassie as well as to secure the Book of Doors from nefarious would-be owners, the worst of whom is simply named “the woman”.
There are elements of time travel in the book (going in and out of doors can lead you back and forth in time, resulting in seeing a new or old version of yourself—a little hard to keep straight) as well as elements of people using magic, but this is a book that is grounded in reality. It asks the question “What if this were possible?” and then shows us every eventuality. The ability Brown has to see the scope of the story is admirable and his creativity for using books as plot devices is brilliant. I had a few quibbles with Cassie’s own belabored descriptions, and by the time we reached the end, I really wanted just five more pages to wrap everything back together and address every little detail. But sometimes the beauty of a story is leaving something unsaid, leaving the reader’s imagination to fill in those gaps, leaving the door open for the reader to either close or walk through.
