3.5/5 stars. I have mixed feelings about this book. I love books about books, and this is definitely in that category. I didn’t mind the slow start and enjoyed how the plot built from simple and whimsical to dark and high-stakes. The themes of grief and regret were beautifully depicted.

However, the prose was quite uneven. Some passages were beautiful while others were clunky and strange. There was a lot of the author unnecessarily telling us something a character was thinking or feeling instead of allowing us to interpret it from the scene itself. I also found the character descriptions to be simplistic and awkward. For example, one character was repeatedly referred to as “the Black man" despite everyone knowing his name. Initial descriptions of two of the main characters seemed to be written by a man uncomfortable describing women (the food and weight comments were absolutely unnecessary). That being said, I really enjoyed the world he created. I would be interested in reading more of his books in the future.

Thoughts: This is an amazing book, made even more wonderful by the fact that it is a debut novel. I must admit, I am insanely jealous (but in a good way). The author draws you into Cassie’s world(s) and makes what is happening to her and her friends almost believable. She receives The Book of Doors from an old man who she befriended. She quickly realizes it’s a magic book—one that can take her anywhere in the world. Then she discovers that it can also take her “any-when”. Like back to when her grandfather was alive. And it’s not the only magic book there is. There are books of shadow, pain, joy, safety, despair, and more. All the emotions a person has.

The author gives the reader incredible imagery. For instance: the buildings across the street a crossword puzzle of lit and unlit windows. Can’t you just see windows in city buildings at night looking like this?
The situations caused by the people using (and misusing) the books are interesting. I was really pulled into the story. And the ending was well-done and tied up all the loose ends. I can see where there could be other books in a series, but this one is complete.

Recommendation: definitely recommended for those who want something a little different.
Disclaimer: Disclosure of Material: I received a final and/or advanced reader copy of this book with the hope that I will leave my unbiased opinion. I was not required to leave a review, positive or otherwise, and my opinions are just that… My Opinions. I am posting this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”

I enjoyed this story. it was intriguing and entertaining. I'm giving it 4 stars because I could not put it down. .

I loved this book. It was such a fun and entertaining read. This fantasy book was simply captivating, had lots of action, good vs. evil, time travel, engaging characters, and magic books! And we all love books, right? Especially when they’re magical.

This dark fantasy book is well written, the characters well developed and the magic system based on books, new and original to me. As I read further into this delightful book, the more I became engrossed and the more I enjoyed it. I was sad to read the end and can only hope the author chooses to explore more of this world and write some more of it for us.

I’m definitely looking forward to reading more of this author’s work. And for anyone who likes original fantasy books that don’t include dragons, I highly recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

2.5 ⭐ Rounded up.


I had high expectations for this book, given its theme centered around magical books – a concept that seemed perfect for me. Unfortunately, the concept was marred by lackluster execution. About 1/4 of the way into the book, I'd catch my eyes glazing over and skipping paragraphs. I didn't connect with any of the characters, they just felt so...one dimensional. The world building felt disjointed in that one area would be so beautifully detailed, the next would have a one-line description. The prose felt clunky to me and too lengthy. It left me wanting more magical, wonderous moments, and more depth to the characters and narrative.

What did captivate me was the enchanting nature of the magic, the intrigue surrounding the magical books, and the inclusion of darker elements. Despite the initial challenges, I continued on instead of giving up because I was eager to uncover the backstory of the books. This is why I ultimately rated it 3 stars. I'm glad I stuck with it, as I found genuine enjoyment in certain sections.

I think this book will be appreciated and loved by many. Reading is subjective, and I'll probably be an outlier with my sentiments on this one.

Thank you, William Morrow and NetGalley, for the DRC.

To be completely honest initially I had a hard time getting into the story. The writing is very detailed, and there are a lot of descriptors about things that objectively don’t really matter to further the plot, however it does make for some great imagery throughout. Once I adjusted to the writing style I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I feel like I flew through the second half of the book because I had to know what happened next. I appreciated the relationships between the characters. I hope to see more in this world orchestrated by Brown in the future. Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

I am speechless. This book was so wonderful. I love how fast paced everything is and how the characters are all straight forward. This was such an original plot and I absolutely flew through it. I had never heard of anything like this which intrigued me to request the ARC, and I am super glad I did! I love how the storylines all merged. I also adore all the character relationships. Izzy and Cassie are so goals!! The amount of description and detail in this book is extraordinary. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but it’s so hard with this book. The plot twists were so unexpected and I loved all of them so much! I had physical reactions to this book and was screaming at least once every chapter. My family asked me multiple times if I was okay because of how loud I was 😭. This ARC made me feel so many different emotions, it was such a wild ride. I am soso thankful for this ARC and I can’t wait until it comes out!

This book took me a while to get into it. I was hoping it would grab be right away as I loved the synopsis and the realism hooked me. This story did get better towards the end, but not without wanting to throw in the towel a few times.

While the premise of The Book of Doors promised intrigue and mystery, but the journey left me rather disappointed and the narrative failed to captivate my interest. The characters felt one-dimensional, and the pace of the story dragged on without delivering the anticipated excitement. Unfortunately, I was unable to finish the book as the promised allure failed to materialize, leaving me bored and unengaged.

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown is a debut novel with a fun premise. The concept of this book- there are magical books that give you powers such as traveling across time and distance using any door, hiding in the shadows, manipulating matter, etc.- was exciting and held a lot of potential. Brown built an interesting world that blended magic into the real world. The plot was engaging, and while it had a slow start, it picked up and kept me interested. Brown also did a good job of tracking the time travel and how events in the past affect events in the present. I found the time travel aspect of the book to be the most engaging. While the world-building and plot worked well, I found the characters, particularly the protagonist Cassie, challenging to care about. While we are supposed to like Cassie, I found her rude and hard to root for. So, while the characters were a disappointment, I enjoyed the plot and look forward to seeing how Brown's writing grows in future novels!

I had a hard time getting into this one, but once I was 40% in I was hooked. There was a lot to keep straight at first but once the bits started to mix and converge, I wanted to know more. The twists and turns were fabulous. I hope this becomes a series!!

The Book of Doors starts with a fascinating premise - a book that you can hold in your hand to open a door to magically take you anywhere in the world. I wanted to love the book. I never could connect with the main character, Cassie. I should - she's a fellow book pusher in a beloved bookstore but that's where all the similarities end. Izzie seems to care deeply about her friend but I couldn't really buy into their friendship. It felt surface level.

The plot was engaging but moved too slowly for me. There were also too many characters to try to keep track of. The woman made a horrific villain - I'm going to have nightmares about her. Kudos to creating a truly terrifying villain.

The concept for this book is truly brilliant. The writing and execution just did not work for me. Thank you kindly for giving me an opportunity to read and review The Book of Doors.

There were four books that I was really looking forward to (and had preordered) for the beginning of 2024 and this was one of them. The premise, lore behind the magic, and idea was reminiscent of The Binding which intrigued me. I also LOVED the cover art on both the US and UK preorders and found myself looking forward to reading this. Thank you to the publisher for providing this ARC for me to read and review, I appreciate it.

As a female reader, at about 10% in I found myself becoming wary. Our perception is heavily influenced by our culture, our gender, and our life experiences and in this case my perception of the author’s portrayal of the characters and what they chose to focus on early on was not favorable. For example, having a female character complain about their appearance, not looking pretty enough, not feeling thin enough, not wanting to eat because they are afraid they will gain weight, feeling disgusted by themselves when they eat more than one pancake or (heaven forbid) pancakes AND bacon came across as a man telling women that is how they should feel in that moment. Later on there are times where one of the other characters, Drummond, tells Cassie that she needs to eat and that she needs the energy to recover which is a step in the right direction but immediately after (in the next line) makes reference to Izzy who “was already eating as a woman who never needed encouragement to eat”. As a self-assured, healthy, female reader who has fought against media portrayals that mess with what is truly “healthy”, this insecure body image/unhealthy relationship with food as a recurring theme was not something I found compelling. If anything, it was enough for me to reflect on the book more critically than I would have if my perception (again based on culture, gender, and experiences) were different. There are attempts at including marginalized groups (Japanese Americans, LGBTQIA+) but slurs for the groups are also present. Overall, this to me was a glaring reminder of how hard it is for us to truly see the world the way others see it. For me, I could not relate positively to the characters in this story and found myself vacillating between wanting to jump into the book and explain things that I feel they should already know and wanting to close the book and leave them to their own devices.

In summary, this was a great idea but the execution came across a bit dated. I wish some of the sensitive topics that were mentioned briefly on the sidelines of the main story were either excluded or handled differently because the magical lore and the fantasy ideas were compelling.

This book absolutely does secret magical realism in a modern setting right. Every instance where I wondered why more people wouldn’t know about magic was explained, and it was done in a manner that didn’t distract from the story. I liked that technology was used in a manner that made the story feel more realistic. This truly felt like a story that could exist within our world.

Additionally, I loved how well the settings were described. One of the main focuses of the book is the ever-changing location the story is occurring in, so the level of detail that the book went into to describe these places really added to the story.

I think that marketing this story to fans of The Night Circus is very accurate, as the slow way that the plot unravels through the viewpoint of multiple characters was similar in this story. As someone who loved The Night Circus, I found myself enjoying this book for many of the same reasons.

I really enjoyed how realistic the characters’ reactions were to magic. A lot of times in books, characters who previously had no experience with magic existing will simply brush off the impossible suddenly becoming reality, but the characters in this book were suitably awe-struck. I liked that they took pictures, talked about the possibilities that had just become available to them (including several more mundane, but realistic, considerations), and also considered what someone else might do in their shoes. It was also extremely refreshing that the characters were quick to understand what was happening and make connections. I also enjoyed how many different characters the book focused on, as it made how all of the stories came together extremely satisfying.

The creation of the books was so incredibly clever and I absolutely did not see it coming! I literally gasped out loud when I realized what was going on. I loved the fractured timelines in this story and I think they made for such a unique and interesting plot.

My only real critique of this book is that I thought the interactions between characters sometimes felt a bit dry. There were several instances where either the way a character responded to another or the dialogue tag used didn’t quite match the tone of the rest of a scene, which lessened the impact of the conversation happening. For example, a character tells Cassie thank you for saving their life and her response is “okay”. The book was also a bit gorier than I expected!

All in all, I really enjoyed this book! The plot was very intricate and full of surprises. I liked that I didn’t feel like there were any loose ends by the final chapter. The actions of the characters were realistic—the mistakes they made and the solutions they came up with to solve them made for a very enjoyable book that never had me rolling my eyes at how the characters proceeded. The imagery and descriptions was stunning. The cyclical timeline that this book follows was brilliant and so well done.

Thank you to William Morrow & NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

I am going to recommend this book for my friends to read. I will warn them that it is a little difficult to start but once you push through to maybe 30% of the book it really starts getting your mind going. I was really entertained and it slowly revealed different plot points where it made you want to keep going but you couldn’t figure out exactly where the book was going to next. I will say though, due to this fact, there were some points where I was quite a bit lost on what was happening but by the end I was able to make sense of it. The different POVs at first was hard to grasp but it soon revealed why it was important to the plot.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC

3.5 ☆

To be honest, this book really shines with the world building. The possibilities with these ‘magical’ books are endless and I found it a great topic to make a book about! Though, I will say, I couldn’t really connect with the characters. Perhaps there was some character development, but I couldn’t see them as people instead of just characters written in a book. In the beginning, I felt that the writing could be confusing as we would be given random details in the middle of the plot that would disturb the story- though I was happy to see that these details had a use in the later parts of the story. The story had a lovely wrap up and I was happy that the plot points could connect in a success way, especially with a broad topic like this.

Cassie Andrews is a bookstore worker who befriends Mr. Webber, a regular customer with a love of classic books. One day, Cassie unexpectedly receives a strange book from Mr. Webber which she later learns is called “The Book of Doors.”

Cassie unexpectedly uses the book to open doors to anywhere she imagines in her head, and excitedly shows her roommate, Izzy, who suspiciously warns Cassie this book may be dangerous. Suddenly, they are being hunted after learning the importance and the history of the book…and that there are other magic books with different powers.

Gareth Brown does an excellent job at throwing in twists and turns in this book that takes us anywhere we want to go. Although parts of the book (including the history of the book) were slow and hard to read through, I thought this book was original and a fun read!

Recommended for fans of fantasy and suspense, I recommend this book to find out the fate of Cassie, Izzy, the book of doors, and what all of the magic books can do. Warning: parts of the book contain swearing and graphic violence.

I received an ARC from NetGalley for my honest review. The beginning is a little slow, but once the pace picks up, you will be sucked into the story. The main character is given a magical book that allows her to travel from one place to another by opening one door while visualizing another. The villains soon appear to try to take possession of the book and the adventure begins. Eventually, it is discovered that the Book of Doors not only controls place but also time so we get time travel too!
The ending is satisfying and I can see the possibility of a second installment.

Spectacular! This is my grown up escapism exactly how The Neverending story was for me as a kid. This book follows our MC Cassie as she is gifted The Book of Doors and its magical possibilities. She meets some characters along the way who come to be very important to her and the outcome of this fantasy.

I finished reading this on December 31st, my last book of 2023, but I had to take time to absorb and process all that the story was. It was captivating. The plot, the twists, characters. Time travel stories can be tricky and sometimes confusing, this was not an example of that. I thought the storyline was truly well thought out, well written and easy to follow. I also think it's a feat when a writer can introduce many characters into a story, and still maintain clear descriptions of who's who. I could visualize each of them and felt like I could relate to many of their emotions. I found the idea that each book held different powers and elements of magic very symbolic. Books in general have the ability to transport readers to other places and evoke emotion simply with words on a page. Books really are, in a sense, magical in our everyday life. I loved that aspect of the book. It made me, as a lover of books and an avid reader, in a way feel powerful myself. This book definitely brought to life works of a creative imagination. I enjoyed it immensely.
The only part(s) I wasn't most fond of were the gory ones, and there were a few, but I also think they were necessary to make the desired impact of those scenes. So while I can't say I would change that, it still creeped me out and made me cringe. Therefore if fractions of stars were an option, I'd give this book a 4.75. Overall this was a great read and I would/will recommend it to others.
I did want to mention that I've seen reviews where people were offended by certain phrases and descriptions of some characters and to that I would like to say, people will find offense over anything these days. I'm personally from South Carolina and a regular church attendee (I'm a Christian **gasp**) and yet I managed to find no offense to pastor Merlin Gilette, nor his childrens, characters ;-)

In addition I would like to include my favorite quotes from the book:

"I am firmly of the view that more people in this world could use their brains more often..."
"Don't waste your life hidden away in your own mind. Make the most of the time you have, otherwise before you know it, you'll have no time left."