Thanks Netgalley for the ARC. This was, for lack of a better word, weird. Miden is some sort of commune or post apocalyptic society but what it is, is never made clear. The characters don't have names. Where they are from is unclear. Most of the proceedings are very unclear, and mostly I just didn't care.

I'm sorry, but I just cannot get into this book. I'm at about 45% and find I really don't care about any of the characters enough to bother finishing it.
Miden is a future commune like place where everyone has to go through an acceptance process before being allowed to join. That comes up as one of the members, known as Him, has been accused by "the girl" of inappropriate sexual behavior. This behavior is related to His partner, known as Her, who is pregnant and wants to believe Him, but can tell in her heart that the girl is truthful.
Should he be charged and found guilty, he will be excluded from Miden forever. What about Her? The girl? What happens to them?
Thanks NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Girl at the Door was an interesting book. It's very much on-point with current topics and the Me Too movement, and one thing I did like was the ambiguity. In the end, we cannot be 100% sure whose narrative is true, perhaps because all the characters view the events from their own perspective and therefore see things differently. One thing I did find a little strange was the excessive distancing. With the semi-fantasy setting and the fact that not a single character was ever named, it became an Everyman tale, saying this could happen to anyone, anywhere. However, the downside of that was that it made it hard to connect with and care about the characters. It stopped me from fully investing in the story, because I felt so far removed from it all. Overall, I am giving this book three stars. It was certainly an interesting idea, and there was plenty I enjoyed, but certain aspects of the storytelling didn't quite work for me.

Yet another book that I wanted to like, but didn't. That feels like a trend lately - maybe I need to be more picky about the books I choose.

I didn't like any of the characters, I didn't like the story, I didn't like the writing.... well, you get the point.

That being said, it's not a bad book, and I am sure that there are people that will like it. It's just not my style.

My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
In <u>The Girl at the Door</u>, a young girl approaches the narrator (we only know the narrator as "Her"). Over cups of tea, the young girl accuses the narrator's lover - who was her professor - of having raped her over a long period of time during their "relationship". When asked by the narrator ("Her") why the young girl never reported the rapes, the girl confesses that she wasn't aware at the time that she WAS being raped.

The female narrator then reflects back on her own relationship with "Him" (the accused professor), whom she met while on vacation in Miden. You come to suspect that Miden is some type of commune or refuge and that the rest of the world is "dying of repression." The female narrator states that this decay is the result of people not act on their emotions or desires - due to excessive fear or caution.

The male perpetrator/accused is also a co-narrator and he spews all types of stereotypical descriptions and beliefs about these two women in his life, and women in general Of course, those passages are very disturbing because his version is that his relationship with his young student is purely consensual, but the author hints that this is not in fact the case.

This "me too" novel attempts to portray the points of view of the perpetrator and his various victims in this particular scenario in a very impersonal way: the narrators are never named. Like many books where the narrators deliver information in endless, monotonous paragraphs, the story becomes more of a biography than an actual event, and it loses its realism. The book's concept was intriguing at first, but the interior monologues made me tune out more than once.

In the end, the writing style was too impersonal, the characters did not seem at all real to me, and the ending was predictable. I give this a 3.5 out of 5.

A different style than most I read, It did have its good points. It had a setting that was interesting and I would like to hear more about. It also had a very satisfying ending. All in all it wasn't my favorite but worth the read.