I was skeptical coming into this one because the premise is really unappealing, especially so soon after the events of the novel took place in real life, but I’ve enjoyed Cashore’s previous work so I wanted to give it a fair try.

The problem is that this isn’t really a novel in the proper sense. It’s structured as such, but it’s mostly an endless, repetitive rant about America in 2016-2020. It’s not that I don’t agree with Cahore’s general perspective. Yes, Trump was bad. Covid was also bad. Living through the combination of the two was worse. But I’m pretty sick of rehashing it and complaining about it, and it’s far too soon to revisit it academically or emotionally.

And while I think it’s fine to use this time and place as the backdrop of a novel, simply complaining about it is not a plot, it’s not character development, it’s not really even a worthy attempt that establish time and place.

All of this just seemed disappointingly self indulgent, like instead of journaling or talking to friends or a therapist, the author decided to dump her (common and unoriginally rendered) complaints on the reader. I have greatly enjoyed Cashore’s previous world building and storytelling, but this, as they say, ain’t it, and I’m surprised a publisher let this go to print.

This brought me right out of a book slump. Kristin Cashore is an incredible author, and I was delighted to follow her into this charming urban fantasy. I wish Wilhelmina's aunts would adopt me for their own.

Book Review of There is a Door in This Darkness by Kristin Cashore

Cover Story: Maze
BFF Charm: Peas in a Pod
Talky Talk: Temperance
Bonus Factors: Unconventional Families, Body Positivity, Birds, Friendship
Anti-Bonus Factors: Arbitrary Skepticism, Politics
Relationship Status: TEABS

Cover Story: Maze
Mazes aren’t really a recurring motif in this story, but you could argue that Wilhelmina is lost and trying to find her way, and it does relate to the title. I would have liked to see some cute owls or elephants – which are recurring motifs – but that might give the wrong impression of how serious this book is, so yeah – this works.

The Deal:
Boston, 2020. Wilhelmina Hart’s beloved aunt Frankie died of cancer in 2016. Four years later, she’s still grieving when COVID hits. Now instead of the post-graduation gap year with her aunt she always looked forward to, she’s stuck in a too-small apartment with worried parents and rambunctious younger siblings while her two best friends share a pandemic bubble without her, and the presidential election is wearing on everybody’s nerves. As if that’s not enough, Wilhelmina starts seeing mysterious, sparkly messages that lead her to her classmate James Fang, whose family’s doughnut shop is struggling to stay in business. Is she losing her grip on reality, or are the messages real – and what are they trying to tell her?

BFF Charm: Peas in a Pod
I can relate to Wilhelmina for a number of reasons. She’s fighting to ignore society’s pressure to lose weight. She gets along better with old ladies than her peers. She hides from her loved ones to avoid snapping at them when she’s in a snappish mood and they don’t deserve it. She cannot take a compliment without analyzing it to death: “I’m a queen (…) Am I, like, bossy?” Last but not least, there’s the highly specific irritation of wearing glasses with a face mask. I don’t have a James, though (sigh!) – and let me tell you, if I saw mystical signs leading me toward one, I’d follow them like a shot.

Swoonworthy Scale: 6
James and Wilhelmina take social distancing very seriously: masks on, six feet apart. That doesn’t mean she can’t use her eyes or her imagination, though, to appreciate a cute boy who bakes doughnuts and studies wild birds. She’s wary at first, because supernatural things keep happening every time they meet, but since he sees them too and is as bewildered as she is, she can’t help but trust him. When other forms of intimacy are not possible, verbal intimacy means a lot. The way they admit to each other in words how much they wish they could touch may be one of the most romantic things I’ve read this year so far.

Talky Talk: Temperance
Wilhelmina’s late aunt Frankie was a tarot card reader. Temperance was her favorite card because, to her, it represented a balanced way of looking at the world: “Remembering the mundane makes you smart,” she advises her niece in a flashback. “Remembering the magic makes you brave.” Wilhelmina has trouble following this advice, as she’s too unhappy to believe in magic (even when it’s literally happening), but it describes Cashore’s writing style perfectly.

Bonus Factor: Unconventional Families
James’ family is Chinese on his father’s side and Italian on his mother’s. As a little boy at his nonna’s funeral, he mixed Chinese and Western rites and threw paper offerings at the church roof to get them to Heaven. This resonates with Wilhelmina because her own family is similar. Her aunts Frankie, Esther, and Margaret were a polyamorous triad before Frankie’s death, used to blending traditions from their different backgrounds: they have Shabbat candles, tarot cards, and a Saint Francis of Assisi icon in the same household, and it’s beautiful.

Bonus Factor: Body Positivity
Wilhelmina is fat and has a chronic pain condition, but nothing and nobody is going to stop her from appreciating her body. She takes care of herself (stretching exercises, dictating instead of typing when her hands hurt) and makes an effort to look for fashions that suit her, not because she’s vain or insecure, but because she enjoys fashion.

Bonus Factor: Birds
After Wilhelmina and James witness the rescue of an injured owl, he tells her that his dream is to work at a wild bird sanctuary. He points out local birds to her and sends her videos to cheer her up. The only time we see him lose his temper is at the sight of an endangered species of woodpecker as a taxidermy trophy, and I can’t blame him.

Bonus Factor: Friendship
Wilhelmina is fiercely loyal to her friends Julie and Bee, ever since they were children and supporting Bee through an abusive home life. But now that Julie and Bee share a pandemic bubble so their younger siblings can be homeschooled together – they can fix each other’s makeup, but Wilhelmina can’t see them without their masks – she’s afraid of becoming a third wheel. Struggling to hide this fear, paradoxically, makes her keep them at even more of a distance. Can they ever be as close as they used to be?

Anti-Bonus Factor: Arbitrary Skepticism
Wilhelmina’s magic is clearly inherited from her aunts. She’s grown up all her life listening to them talk about drawing energy from the earth and sensing the personality of an object’s past owner. As a child, she used a sixth sense to locate everyone in her house, and she can still do it if she concentrates. But when the visions start (admittedly in very weird ways, like a fortune teller prophesying that her doughnuts will be stale), it takes ages for her to admit that there might be other options besides losing her mind.

Anti-Bonus Factor: Politics
The 2016 and 2020 presidential elections are discussed in all their exhausting, infuriating detail. I’m not even American and it still gave me unpleasant memories – although Wilhelmina’s determination to check her own biases was inspiring.

Relationship Status: TEABS
Kristin Cashore has outdone herself again: first the Graceling series, then Jane, Unlimited, and now this. When I’m an old lady and someone asks me what the 2020’s were like for someone like me, all I will have to do is hand them this book.

This book was well written and the characters were great but I feel like it took me forever to get through this one. I think a lot of readers would enjoy this story and I really did enjoy the overall story in this book and that it tied back to things we all experienced before and during COVID. Loved the main character and her story throughout the back and how everything seemed to tie back at the end.

I was provided an ARC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

I loved the Graceling series by the author, so I jumped on the chance to read her latest book. I didn't even read the synopsis, which I should have. This is nothing like Graceling. T This is a magical realism book set during the COVID pandemic and the 2020 election. Both of those topics a bit too raw, and the 2024 election is looking to have the same candidates run. This book focused on a time I'd rather forget, and is heavily politicized. I don't think I would have picked this book up had I known how politically focused it was.

I thought the author did a good job expressing Wilhelmina's emotions through the pandemic regarding anger, jealousy, grief, chronic pain, and loss. She wasn't coping well with any of her feelings, and I think that was pretty true for many of us as we navigated the pandemic. The book is told in alternating timelines that eventually bring her story together with all of the strange things that have been happening to her and make her face that she isn't OK. I can understand and appreciate why the author wrote this book as a way of coping with what we all went through especially the stress, grief, and trauma many experienced. I hope that readers can relate to Wilhelmina and the journey she goes on.

Overall I do think this was well written, but this one wasn't my favorite by the author. Readers are either really going to connect with the main character and the journey she is going on or they aren't going to like her at all. Perhaps younger readers will relate to Wilhelmina a bit better than I did. The timeline jumps are either going to be to your preference or not. This book is very heavily politicized, and I prefer to keep real life politics out of my fiction. I have my opinions, but I part of the reason I read is to escape real life, and this book put me right back into the center of several very hard years.

I wanted to like this book so much.... I loved the first maybe 20% of it. But I couldn't get through the politics and honestly, it may be too early for me to be immersed in a book about COVID.

3.5 almost 4 stars
This book has fantasy as the first genre, but I really didn't see any fantasy in it. It was a little more magical realism I think. So this threw me off a little. It's also VERY political (anti-Trump) and COVID heavy.
This book is about our main character Wilhelmina navigating one of her great-aunts death piled on COVID piled on Trump's election and subsequent stress of the next election. She has kind of been going through the motions, taking a year off school before going to college to help her 2 younger siblings through their schooling. 2 of her great aunts (all 3 lived together in Pennsylvania) have come to live with them through the pandemic. One day, Wilhelmina starts seeing weird things and finds out a boy from her class James is also seeing them. Will this pull her out of her trauma depression?
I liked the characters, Wilhelmina had a great bond with her 2 best friends, but they cannot spend any time together due to COVID restrictions. Her family was extremely supportive of her and of everyone in the family which was very sweet. My favorite characters were Delia, Wilhelmina's 10 year old sister who was extremely sassy and the aunts. We get flashbacks, so really I loved all 3 of them because we do get to get to know all of them.
So I don't really like political books, and I feel like a book about the 2016 and 2020 elections are so close that it just made me a little panicky with the 2024 election coming up, though I agree with the character's views. There was a lot of political talk. Weirdly enough, I was interested in the book as a whole. It wasn't really plot driven, it was more character driven. I had absolutely no trouble following along even though there was literally no action or anything. I just had a genuinely good time with it (I just knocked it down a little because there was SO much political and COVID talk).
I would definitely not suggest this book if you are still triggered by COVID or the 2016/2020 elections, but if those things don't bother you, I would suggest giving it a try!

There is a Door in This Darkness is the first book by Kristin Cashore that I read that wasn’t Graceling—as many of you know, I’m a huge fan of the Graceling series! At first, I wasn’t sure if a contemporary YA was for me, but the description of this book being about magic had me really curious—how is something both magical and contemporary?! Also, this book is about grief, and that is something that does tend to draw me in, having had my fair share.

TIADITD reminded me so much of the movie Big Fish (based on a book by the same name, that I’ve not read) because in a seemingly ordinary world, magic abounds and coincidence and connection sweep the MCs on a journey of discovery—and, in Wilhelmina’s case, overcoming loss and finding love.

This book also deals with the COVID Pandemic and the 2016 and 2020 elections, so basically this book is heavy, and yet it’s filled with light—both literal and figurative. It was kind of interesting to me that I didn’t always like Wilhelmina, she was often selfish, grouchy, and irrational, and yet I loved her journey, and I also enjoyed how she found her way out of those frustrations that I felt with her. I also loved the cast of characters; I feel like each one was well-rounded and solidly developed and the book would not have been the same without each and every individual side character because they all affected Wilhelmina and her adventure in different and important ways. James was, of course, my favorite—who doesn’t love a doughnut-slinging MLI who seems fated to enter one’s life?

In the end, I give this book five stars; but I will say the political commentary—while I wholeheartedly agree!—came off a little too pointedly to have felt natural on the part of the narrator, and I think would have felt less forced had the book maybe been in first person POV or the language been only used by the characters.

Unfortunately this one was a DNF for me. I found it to be very boring and I just couldn’t get into it.

I wasn’t a huge fan of this book because of all the political-ness of it. It just felt over done and unnecessary. It felt like ever other sentence was bringing up the 2020 election or isolation that just didn’t tie in well with the plot.

I'll be honest this book wasn't it for me. I found the flashbacks to be too much and not necessary to the story. I thought in the beginning there would be more magical realism but there wasn't. It probably would have been better if that had been left out and it was more about what a young girl experienced during the covid pandemic after graduating high school.

This book is like spending an extended amount of time with a close friend, reminiscing about past lives and future realities.

Wilhelmina is one of those lucky teens who entered high school during the 2016 elections and graduated in 2020, so her high school years were in the shadow of a Trump presidency and ushered out with a stressful election during the COVID 19 pandemic, and that's where the book takes root and blooms into a character-driven look at life, grief, politics, and understanding how we fit into all of that. All of that with a dash of magic.

Since it is so heavily focused on the pandemic and politics during that time, it might be "too soon" for some readers, but for others, it will be like a reflection on how we got to where we are now. The story is slow and feels more like reliving memories than reading a book with a heavy plot and exciting scenes. It's a rainy day with a cozy blanket an a beverage of the perfect temperature. It's not a fast-paced, edge of your seat thriller. And for that exact reason, I adore this book and will recommend it to everyone.

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. #ThereIsaDoorinthisDarkness #NetGalley

I need to start this review with saying I think it’s too soon to be immersing myself in books/movies/television that is based around the pandemic. I understand for some writing/creating based on that will heal them, but I read to escape and the pandemic isn’t a place I want to escape to. That being said I liked this book even if I had a hard time reading it. This was definitely a book I put down often and if it wasn’t one I’d found on BookishFirst I may not have finished it. I liked the magical realism in this book. I liked the characters even if the lack of communication between Wilhelmina and her friends was painful. I loved James and his push to talk about what was happening. I didn’t love the combination of the election and pandemic. Those things sucked beyond all words and I don’t need the reminders. The writing was good, but I thought the flashbacks were too long and there were too many mentions of the election. While I loved that he was referred to as the Monster I didn’t think he needed quite so many pages dedicated to him and his hissy fits. I think I would enjoy other things by this author more and maybe I would have enjoyed this book in a few years. I gave it 3.5 stars and rounded up since I think it might have been more of a me problem.

Shouting from the rooftops that this book is peak magical realism, and Cashore has put just the right amount of both here.
I understand the critiques saying that this book is too rooted in 2020, but I think that enough time has passed to remember what the nation went through. This book was more hopeful than I anticipated, and while parts of it were sad, the book as a whole was not a sad book.

This book made me cry for basically the entire second half.

As someone who lost their grandmother recently it made me reflect on the legacy I was left from my own grandmother - while it was nothing so magical as Wilhelmina's, I was left something to do, an identity, a torch to carry on. The kindness and love I got from my grandmother was a gift and a responsibility - to share the warmth from her for others.

Reading this book made me reflect on that. This book was very character driven, low on plot, but I did find myself pushed along by wanting Wilhelmina to confront her grief and isolation.

This book really illuminated the way that grief, isolation, and anxiety can interact in ways that aren't always apparent. Grief can make you feel anxious in ways that aren't one-to-one connected to the source of your grief, and vice versa. It's hard to tease apart those threads, that ouroboros of painful emotions. It's important to try, and it's especially important to communicate that effort to your loved ones - and that's the part that Wilhelmina struggles with so much, as do we all in our late teens and early adulthood.

All in all this book could have used slightly less politics (especially since the intended audience is going to be somewhat removed from that era, I don't see it aging well) and that's coming from a deeply leftist person. No stars deducted for it though, because everything else shined so, so much.

Thank you to Penguin Teen for an early copy of this book. This book just wasn’t for me. I found the plot a bit confusing and the jumping from flashbacks to present day hard to keep track of as well. I also, thought this was wayyyy too political for me and for a YA book. COVID and COVID related protocols were frequently mentioned and the 2020 presidential election was a huge part of the plot. Not really what I prefer to read in my books and not the escape from reality I typically look for.

I was drawn to the concept here, but just could not get into this story. I'm not a fan of dystopian tales and that's how this felt - even though it was set in the past. I just couldn't connect with the characters or fall into the world being presented. There was a lot of anger - which I get, but I am just not ready to revisit those scared, angry feelings again at this point in time. This wasn't a good fit for me - at least, not now.

This is a hard book to rate. On the one hand, it’s packed full of so many hard but important conversations and topics (specifically geared at kids who missed out on big milestones during the quarantine period of COVID, or oldest daughters, or people grieving, or people feeling isolated, or people struggling to come to grips with how many people can support fascism/bigotry/etc), but on the other hand it’s pretty light on forward momentum/plot/pacing.

The book takes place during the longest week of my life (and I’m sure any marginalized person in America would agree with that assessment): election week 2020. But it also takes place over the course of a young girl’s lifetime as she grows up and encounters many things that she struggles to understand. It touches on hard topics: cancer, abuse, depression, grief, anxiety, pandemic anxiety, pandemic isolation, pandemic depression, messy election feelings, racism, sexism, homophobia, fatphobia.

This is an important book because it doesn’t shy from those messy quarantine feelings; most books either barely acknowledge the pandemic or pretend it didn’t happen entirely. This is the first book I’ve read that really dug into it - particularly the isolation and anxiety aspects.

But, again, the book is plot-lite. It took a long time to get through because there wasn’t really a driving force. And it’s depressing; I think a lot of people (myself included) have unprocessed feelings about those quarantine years, which would make a book like this very difficult to read. And I think that makes it doubly important for the kids who make up the target audience: young people who were in school during this time, who had to sacrifice their normal in a totally irretrievable way as milestones passed them by unacknowledged.

The blurb for the book is extremely accurate. Class of 2020 Wilhelmina Hart must navigate not only the trauma of the Trump and Covid years, but deal with the grief of her most beloved aunt. With health issues aggravated by stress and depression, Wilhelmina is cooped up with parents, younger siblings and her two remaining aunts, deferring college til after the pandemic and helping her family instead as much as possible. Her best friends are living together to join forces for their younger siblings, and the enforced distance from the two of them while they are together also weighs on her. But then the odd happenings begin, and they always seem to occur around James Fang, who luckily also experiences the weirdness (which reassures her friends who were wondering if she was completely losing it).
This is very much a character driven novel, gradually drawing the reader deeper and deeper into Wilhelmina's mind frame and the many characters' fully developed personalities. These are very real people with deep and complex emotions. The slight touch of magic is the fairy dust of hope, keeping her going while confusing her dreadfully, until she can work out her grief and begin anew. There is a very strong political element - how could there not be? - so someone is bound to be offended. Wilhelmina and her friends and family's attitudes are real and believably expressed whether you agree with them or not. Even fictional characters are allowed to have personal opinions and feelings, and some will find this even refreshing.
Wilhelmina and her family and friends will stick around with you for a long time. Parts were a little slow, but it was well worth it. I felt her pain, so finding a way out of the mire was a truly rewarding experience. Highly recommended.

From a shocking presidential election to the a pandemic, one high school girl will experience loss, growth, and a bit of magic. Wilhemina Hart experiences so much during her highschool years, from a shocking presidential election of 2020 to experiencing the pandemic, and then the loss of her family member. She is dealing with grief, stress, and just trying to get by. When she begins to see mysterious things, it might lead her to something magical. I loved the author's previous work but this one just did not work for me. The story felt so so bland and like reading someone's mundane dairy entries, and not in a fun "lets keep reading" way. I definitely think that this is for a specific type of person to read and that was not me. The characters are meant to be quirky and fun, and while I do magical realism it just felt contrived in this rather than charming and fun.

Release Date: June 11,2024

Publication/Blog: Ash and Books (ash-and-books.tumblr.com)

*Thanks Netgalley and PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group | Dutton Books for Young Readers for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*