"Crossings" by Alex Landragin is a captivating and inventive novel that takes readers on a literary journey across time, space, and interconnected lives. The novel is structured as a set of nested stories, each flowing seamlessly into the next, creating a tapestry of narratives that span different epochs and locations.

Landragin's writing is rich and evocative, immersing the reader in each distinct time period and setting. The novel weaves together tales of love, loss, and the enduring human spirit, exploring how individuals' lives can intersect in unexpected and profound ways. The author skillfully navigates between genres, incorporating elements of historical fiction, romance, and mystery into a cohesive and engaging narrative. I will definitely recommend "Crossings" to fans of "The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue," and "The Night Circus."

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Alex Landragin for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A debut novel that changes all the rules of novel writing. It's a fictional memoir. Part of the story is told in second person. It's a fantasy where people can exchange souls and ultimately live forever, but it's also historical fiction that features the French poet Baudelaire. And it can be read in two different ways.

I usually hate "genre-bending" novels. I usually find them confusing and just plain weird. This one is a bit confusing and weird, but I actually enjoyed the story. I read it in the ordinary, straight forward way and then read it again (skimming in the alternate order. It was equally intriguing. This is definitely not a story for everyone, but fans of books like Cloud Atlas will likely enjoy this one too. Not my favorite, but nice to read something different.

This book can be read two different ways and it traverses time and space. You have 3 manuscripts across 3 timelines and you can read the straight forward, beginning to end as written/bound or start at a different point and read them as a continuous novel.

Truly a different style and story, this was interesting and I think I’d like to read it again but this time as the cohesive novel rather than the normal front to back.

I've always been interested in this book thanks to the nature of its out of the box writing style. The reading continued to surprise me as I read in the best way. The story was beautiful and intricate with more to tell with each passing page.

Crossings by Alex Landragin
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I don’t really know how to describe this book. It was not really like anything else I’ve ever read.

The prologue to this book explains that it can be read two ways: the first is from beginning to end straight through.
The second is a way suggested by someone in the story called “the Baroness”. It jumps around from place to place in the book and the instructions for how to do so are in the prologue.

After a brief google search I decided on the Baroness method.

I was very quickly engrossed with the story and couldn’t put it down. I read it in two days. It was fascinating. And I think I loved it.

The is historical fiction with a fantasy lean. If you read it beginning to end it is broken up into three type of short stories but by the end you would realize that they are all connected.

When I was finished I was very happy that I chose the Baroness method, I think the story started connecting together a lot faster that way.
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4.5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Major kudos to the author on this one! It was well thought out and quite a gripping tale. I’m sad that I slacked on reading it for almost three years. 😅🙈

I really enjoyed this time travel romance. This checked many boxes for me, and time-travel has become a theme that I find I really enjoy. The concept was done in a totally different way in this story - with souls moving from body to body, and I found the approach really unique.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

This was the strangest book, the back and forth was very hard on a kindle. I ended up reading it and then buying a physical copy. Once I finished I immediately handed it to my husband and told him he must read!

I haven't read anything like it and it's hard to put into words but I enjoyed it!

I love the premise of this book, and the writing is beautiful. Even with these factors, I struggled with the concept and the storyline, and my mind meandered as I read it. It was difficult for me to focus.

If you like a challenge, beautiful descriptive language, and a slow burn, then this book is for you. It just wasn't for me.

This book was such a pleasant surprise and offered a new and creative way to read this story. You can read it in two different ways, which I decided to try going back and forth.

In my opinion, the less you know about this novel the better. Without going into spoilers, I will say that this story is about entities (souls?) crossing into three different time periods, which provides us, the reader, with three stories.

While I’m sure others have referenced, this gave me HEAVY Cloud Atlas vibes due to the time jumps in this novel.

Landragin has a beautiful and poignant writing style, and while this is my first read from him I can already tell he is a strong writer.

This story was complicated at times but did blend nicely together once I finished and reflected more. Do yourself a favour and pick this up for your next read!

This copy was provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Ok, I don't know what to really say. I don't know how to describe what I think. It was an overwhelming, confusing, chaotic, jumbled mess. I don't know how else to describe how this book was.

I don't know what I expected from this book. It seemed intriguing, but in the endi just found it complex and confusing

This is an epic tale, for sure, but it's just so dang confusing that I could never quite figure out what was going. You can either read the story in a normal format are the "Baroness Sequence" where chapters are read in a specific order. I did the classic order - front-to -back, but I think I missed some stuff and reading it the alternative way would have been more beneficial for me. This book is certainly not for everyone, though I really enjoyed the concept.

"I didn't write this book, I stole it." With that compelling line, author Alex Landragin sets us off on an inventive and enthralling literary adventure in his novel "Crossings." Readers are welcomed into this strange tale via a preface that gives just enough of an introduction to instill in a reader the need to see where mysterious the tale leads. A bookbinder has been tasked by his oldest and most loyal client, the Baroness, to bind a priceless manuscript. One caveat: the bookbinder must not read its contents. Before the bookbinder can deliver the beautifully bound manuscript to its owner, the Baroness is murdered, and the manuscript's ownerless existence haunts the bookbinder for months. What is he to do with it, with its owner gone and him having given his word not to read it? In the end, thankfully for we readers, he undertakes to read the manuscript's three sections: "The Education of a Monster," City of Ghosts" and "Tale of the Albatross." His wife reads it as well, using an alternate page sequence notated in the manuscript, making the story into a very different tale than is experienced when reading the manuscript in its original order. And so, the story is offered to us, the reader, and we are told we must choose the order in which we'd read it. Through cities, land, and sea, over hundreds of years, we witness an amazing tale of love and pain, frustration and suspicion, and at its core is this ability to "cross" into the body of another person.

I have read this once, in the traditional order, and have been patiently waiting for the right time to read it again in the alternate page sequence. But even with just the one read through, one way, I think about parts of this book constantly, and am very excited to read it again.

Beautiful story and writing. Fun, unconventional format but it did go a bit over my head. I would recommend this to those who want an adult, more elegant version of a choose your own adventure novel!

I could not pay attention to this story. I kept wondering what I was missing by not reading it the other way. Maybe you shouldn’t tell people it can be read that way until the end as a twist.

Mr. Alex Landragin has written a marvelous Möbius strip of a book, one that you will undoubtedly go back to, immediately after you've finished it, and in fact, one that you'll find yourself tantalized to begin re-reading even if you've not quite finished reading it for the first time (!).

In other media, favorable comparisons bestowed on this novel include Cloud Atlas, but even before any of that dawned on me, while reading the first of the trilogy contained here, I was reminded time and again of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, that crackling enigmatic story that refuses to let you understand it, or ever quite figure out what's going on. This story begins in Paris, on the brink of Nazi invasion and subsequent imminent occupation, and as you follow the narrator through those dark, moonless and lifeless nights through the back-alleys and gutters and dungeons and bunkers of the city that Paris was at the time, you struggle to begin to like the story. Nothing much is happening, there are references to a hardly-known poet / author, and there are vague references to some backstory that is hard to see through all the dense fog that the author has generously sprinkled throughout the pages.

As you trudge through the first story and begin the second, however, some things begin to make sense, some others begin to show promise of eventually making sense, and still some others show the capacity of reaching a point enough removed from nonsense, for it to at least be worthwhile. As you continue reading, you see something that seems to be shining just beyond the dense tree-line, just beyond the horizon - you're not clear exactly what. There are overt yet obtuse references to the third story - while you're still on the second one, and you fail to see how it can possibly make sense.

And then the second story ends.

Those last few lines of the second story are truly explosive, and utterly clever. To me, that there is the true heart and core of the idea contained in this book. It is what (already!) made the book a five-starrer to me. I wasn't going to say it was impossible, but it would be well nigh incredible if the book fell in my estimation from there on.

The last story, which occupies a full half of the novel, is the real story - the one that the author has always been trying and wanting to tell you and those first two were merely covers, to dispel naysayers and quell any disbelievers. If you've made it to that third part, you're bound to finish the story, and go back to reading it - the Baroness' way (!).

A marvelous, tragic achievement of a story, that is equaled only by its literary triumph, and the mind-bending creation of what has to be a new sub-genre.

This is a wow of a novel. Ingenious plotting and setup. This makes you think long after you finish. You really have to read it!

CROSSINGS was definitely a unique read for me. Landragin's ability to develop a novel like this shows his mastery as a storyteller and an author who cares about the small parts of the tale just as much as the whole. There is heart, mystery, and magic. What more can you want?

In the preface, a Parisian bookbinder explains that Crossings is a manuscript of three stories bound together: a letter from a poet, a World War II romance, and the autobiography of a deathless enchantress. In a choose your own adventure style, you can read the book straight through and enjoy three interconnected stories. Or you can use the alternative method, skipping around in a predetermined sequence to get one cohesive novel.

Although I thought it was interesting how Landragin constructed the novel in multiple ways, the core story lacked interest with me. Too many descriptors and not enough action made this star-crossed lovers tale drag horribly, and I finally gave up at about 80% through.

Reading the synopsis of Crossings sounded to interesting. I tried to get into this I loved the idea of different reading paths. Sadly I DNF.