“When the winters sleeted in, the doors were meant to hibernate” ARC review TY NG & Megan Giddings

This book is definitely for a certain audience. I enjoyed many parts of the book. It was just very slow for me at points. I found myself enjoying the poetic analogy’s the most.

The concept of this book is amazing and I think I would have been more compelled with less filler words in certain areas. The family dynamic and story of grief is beautiful though.

Although this book wasn’t necessarily my cup of brew, I can definitely see how it will be for others.

Fast read too.

Goodreads -https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7619205768

🚪 Book Review: Meet Me at the Crossroads by Megan Giddings
⭐️⭐️.5/5

This one had such a compelling concept—seven mysterious doors appearing around the world, offering a glimpse into another dimension? I was hooked by the premise. Unfortunately, the execution didn’t live up to the intrigue for me.

The middle of the book dragged considerably, and I found myself skimming through large sections. It leaned heavily into emotional introspection and character dynamics, which overwhelmed the sci-fi/mystery elements I was hoping for. The pacing felt off, and the story could’ve easily been much tighter.

There was also a strong emphasis on the characters’ racial identity, which is absolutely valid and relevant—but it felt overemphasized in a way that started to feel more divisive than insightful. It almost distracted from the plot rather than adding depth.

I truly wanted to enjoy this more, especially with such an original premise and thoughtful writing in places. But overall, it just didn’t work for me.

Readers of Lakewood will enjoy getting into the mind of the sister who remains when one of the twins goes missing.

This book intertwines new and old religions, a tough family dynamic, and the grief of loss.

I wish certain elements surrounding the doors had been explored more but appreciate the authors focus on the impacted sister.

My ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I read the synopsis for this book and was immediately intrigued. Unfortunately, as I was reading, I struggled to connect to the plot. The beginning was repetitive and touched on subjects that certain groups and ethnicities would be familiar with because of life experiences. It’s almost as if the beginning of the book was “Religion 101” and “Introduction to Race Relations.” I found myself wanting to move along from the teaching and get to the mission of the twins.
2.5⭐️
Ayanna was amazing to me and I wanted to get to know her more. I loved that she questioned things, respectfully, and saw that her sister was very stunted in her growth as a person.
Olivia was interesting and I am so curious to see how she turns out.
The sister’s conversations in the beginning were the best parts of the novel for me. I needed more conversation between them and less inner monologues and teaching.

I love a slow burn…however, the pacing was too slow and it took too long to get to the plot of the story. I may revisit later but unfortunately this one was not for me right now.

Meet Me at the Crossroads starts with an irresistible hook: seven mysterious doors appear around the world, offering an escape, or a trap. The premise is rich, and Megan Giddings writes with lyrical intensity, especially when exploring the bond between twin sisters Ayanna and Olivia. The themes of faith, family, and the limits of love are compelling and timely.

But while the setup pulled me in, the pacing often dragged, and I found myself wanting more clarity and structure in the worldbuilding. The otherworldly realm felt more symbolic than lived-in, and at times that made it hard to stay grounded in the stakes. Olivia and Ayanna’s emotional arcs were powerful, but I wanted to see more complexity in the supporting characters and their motivations.

Still, Giddings has a unique voice and big ideas, and I admire the ambition behind this novel. If you like quiet, introspective speculative fiction with a focus on relationships over action, this might work better for you.

I'm a big fan of Megan Giddings, and I really appreciate the opportunity to read this ARC! Unfortunately I don't think I was the right audience for this book. I was very engaged by the concept, and the beautiful cover, but the book itself left me pretty cold. I would recommend this to litfic readers who are interested in exploring themes of grief, faith, religion, and philosophy within a lightly SFF framework. I think many SFF readers might go into this book expecting it to have more emphasis on the science fictional or fantasy elements then it actually does.

My favorite thing about this book was the exploration of Ayanna's experience as a Black woman, and the ways she has had to grapple with whiteness and racism throughout her life. This perspective is very movingly written and I really appreciated that aspect of it.

What worked less well for me was the prose, pacing, and plot. I found the book to be slow going, even though it was fairly short, and I struggled with the storytelling and the style of writing.

I think this was just a reader mismatch. While this one wasn't for me, I very much look forward to reading Giddings’ next novel. 2.5 stars.

Huge thanks to Megan Giddings, Amistad, and NetGalley for generously providing an ARC for review!

For this to be the author’s third novel, the writing immediately read as novice. It sounded like it was setting the scene of a children’s book, and it also seemed as if Giddings was trying to set up a Disney fantasy. I couldn’t get myself to read more. This was disappointing.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy

Meet Me at the Crossroads by Megan Giddings is a third person-POV speculative novel centered around two sisters. Twins Ayanna and Olivia were raised in different homes after their parents’ divorce but remain close over the years. When seven mysterious doors that lead to another door appear, the two consider what is behind those doors and start to move in different directions.

There are a lot of explorations of modern culture that I really appreciated. For one, Ayanna’s friend Jane asks a lot of questions about empathy, specifically if empathy on its own is enough if we don’t question who we are empathizing with and why. We also get explorations of how different kinds of white people view Black people and how that plays a part in the broader culture, such as white individuals marrying someone who is Black and then being offended when their child identifies as Black and ‘erases their whiteness,’ ignoring that while, yes, the child is biracial, the culture the child exists in treats them as Black and that does impact how they move through the world. The part I liked the most was the exploration of Black joy through Ayanna mentioning how much she loved seeing young Black children with beads in their hair and how she views it as a sign of love and affection from their parents. It’s a small detail, but it’s one I’ve never considered and now I can’t unsee it because it does take a long time to bead someone’s hair.

Another really cool exploration was one of faith. Olivia is raised Christian and continues to attend mass over the years while Ayanna and her father explore their spirituality in different ways, including making their own traditions that center on themes like joy. These differences are pushed further with the appearance of the doors as the two sisters wonder if it leads to the afterlife and what the afterlife would even look like. Faith is such a complicated topic and it is one that is usually fraught with strong emotions because it is often a key component in how people determine their morals, so I’m always a fan of a book that explores different ideas of religion and spirituality without saying explicitly who is right and who is wrong.

This is a fairly quick read in terms of page count but has a much slower pacing as it delves into its themes in order to do them justice and tie back into the larger narrative. The narrative is more on the literary side and the doors are more of a device (instead of a hard sci-fi element) that allows Megan Giddings to explore her themes further. It’s certainly not a portal fantasy nor is it looking to explore a million new worlds and kill monsters as the book is more interested in the possibility of the implications of these doors.
Content warnings for mentions of racism

I would recommend this to fans of speculative fiction exploring themes of race and religion and readers of literary fiction that have speculative elements

This book is really divisive and I think that's in a big part of how it's marketed/categorized. It leans heavily into literary fiction but has strong fantastical elements. So if you are a strong fantasy reader, the writing style can be difficult. If you are a literary fiction lover, the story elements can completely take you out of the story. But if you appreciate both genres, this can easily be a 5 star read for you. It's extremely character driven, the speculative elements are strong but don't dominate the narrative, and the relationship between the sisters has a lot of depth and complexity. I think it's an excellent written book, but it definitely needs the right audience.

Did not finish book. Stopped at 40%.

The premise is absolutely fascinating: at some point in a reality alternate to ours, doors appear out of nowhere in various places in the world. They lead to strange new worlds entirely unlike anything anyone has ever seen... and they call to some people. These doors slowly become a part of society: as a site of pilgrimage and central to their own religion, as a presumed hoax, as a heretical deviance in nature. Twins Ayanna and Olivia are born into a split world: their father a member of the religion of the doors, and their mother a devout Catholic. At the dissolution of their parents' marriage, they live separately and evolve into two funhouse mirrors of each other: similar in appearance and design, but their view of the world around them skewed in harshly differing ways.

Ayanna is the focus of the book, growing up with the doors as some sort of nonsensical but benevolent entity, the focus of her father's religion. When she comes of age, their practice involves a grounding ritual of self-acceptance that allows individuals to walk through the door. Due to the divergent nature of the fates of those who have attempted to enter previously, it is very much a leap of faith. Olivia, having grown up with their rigid mother, comes to support her sister--and makes a decision that alters their entire family's lives irreparably.

Going into the book, I didn't quite expect such an emphasis on religion and religious philosophy. While I generally don't have an issue with either subject, I tend to find them to be quite a heavy topic that I can't comfortably deal with for too long. Once I got into part two of the book, Ayanna's mental state deteriorates and the action of the book becomes much more haphazard, jumping around in time in a way I couldn't easily follow and demonstrative of darker thoughts I try to avoid delving into myself. For this reason, I was having a lot of difficulty getting through the book. I will try to return to it at some point, but sadly, it simply isn't for me right now.

If you are ready for a fascinating and philosophical dive into religion, alternate worlds and an exploration into the familial bonds--and trials--of a Black family in the Midwest, try this book out! If you have experienced the loss of a sibling or are sensitive to religious trauma, however, I'd steer clear, as it may evoke some difficult feelings.

Where I currently am, I would give this book between two and a half and three stars.

So much thanks to NetGalley and Amistad for giving me a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Current rating: 2.5 stars

Review posted to StoryGraph: May 18, 2025 (https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/ac0b1010-d595-4648-9665-c9a860d37094)

I was really intrigued by the blurb for this one, and the cover is fabulous - unfortunately, I found the story to be a bit all over the place and could not get into it... It felt like it opened in the middle of the story and I couldn't figure out what was going on or where things were going. This one wasn't for me...

I have no idea how to judge the quality of this – because it’s much more Lit Fic than Spec Fic, and I can’t judge LF at all. Loved The Women Could Fly, but this seems pretty different and very boring to me personally. I kept falling asleep (in the middle of the day) while trying to read it.

Just a case of wrong reader for the wrong book, I think!

I loved this book. It was mostly about faith and grief. And I like how both topics were handled. Ive read 2 other books by Megan Giddings and I loved both of them. This definitely solidified her as a favorite author.

I finished Meet Me at the Crossroads this morning and immediately checked out Megan Giddings Lakewoods from the library. That’s how much I loved this book! I hadn’t read anything by Giddings before, and when I read the description of “ …Crossroad,” I wasn’t sure it would be for me, but the themes explored here are much greater and deeper than the synopsis. I tagged this novel as sci- fi because seven mysterious doors suddenly appear throughout the world and when the doors open, they appear to lead to new dimensions in the universe. The doors open and what is viewed through them differs at times. Of course many will want to walk through them and do. What happens to those who go through the doors varies also. A religion is born. I thought the logical name of the new religion would be “the doors” ( because ima huge fan!). It wasn’t. But what strikes me most about the book is not the plot, it’s the deep treatise on grief, love, and family, (chosen and biological).

…”Once, the spirit sang that love was two intersecting paths. In a small ranch house, a mother converted her grief into red wine. She spoke to herself, to the wind, to God. Each utterance, a different attempt at penitence. If you apologize enough, if you make yourself small before glory, the universe will open its arms to you.

Sometimes, late at night, sometimes after enough prayer, the mother heard her lost daughter’s voice, like music drifting in a window from very far away.

When you are lucky enough to have the dead speak to you, listen.
When you are lucky to be given a miracle, you must see it.
When you are lucky enough to be loved, you must treat it like a seed. You nourish it in yourself, yes, but you are meant to instill it back into the world. To not do this is a sin.”

I loved this book and give it my highest recommendation

I was really excited to read this book based off of the description. The beginning was interesting to read, but was also very confusing with POVs changing left or right with what felt like no rhyme or reason. By the middle I was bored. It’s entirely possible I just missed the whole point of the story, but I did enjoy reading this book.

This book did not work for me. Way too fantastical and unreal I didn’t really enjoy how the plot wasn’t cohesive.

Abandoned this one around 60%. I was hoping for a sci-Fi / Fantasy vibe and this was more gothic ghost story? Interesting liked the premise.

In this mesmerizing novel, twin sisters Ayanna and Olivia are captivated by the appearance of seven mysterious doors that promise to lead to a new world full of beauty and resources. But as they explore the unknown, their bond is tested, and when one sister goes missing, the other is left to unravel the truth about what happened. Megan Giddings weaves a story of faith, love, and the complexities of family in a thrilling exploration of a new, dangerous dimension.

Tragedy strikes when Ayanna's twin sister disappears through a mysterious door and she spends her life haunted by spirits. A slow moving tale.

The premise to Meet Me at the Crossroads sounded promising, but the plot was a bit too meandering for me.