This is another one of those books that I put on hold so long ago that I’d completely forgotten what it was about. I think I saw people talking about it and liking it, which I probably should have taken as more of a sign of what was to come than I did.
The story follows January, a young biracial girl who has been raised by Mr. Locke while her father goes out to gather strange artifacts for him. Her father goes missing and Locke insists that he’s dead, which kicks January into discovering that she can write things into existence and open doors to other worlds, worlds that Locke and his compatriots are very interested in.
Like the main characters, the story wanders. Even though it feels very much like a standard three act structure, there’s something about it that lost me so I didn’t really feel the tension building to the climax in the way it was supposed to. It felt more like events were happening that didn’t feel properly connected to one another rather than building on each one. The stakes were raised, but it didn’t feel like they were raised as a result of what had happened before.
There’s also the two Romeo and Juliet romances12 that happen in the story, first as the story within the story and the one that January experiences that doesn’t really build to anything, and you know that had me skimming. On top of that, I’m now learning that I have to skim the stuff where authors try to explain what being biracial is like because nah.3
I was reading it as a bedtime story, though, and it did a good job of letting me unwind at the end of the day. It’s a very calm story, and there were some very interesting ideas in it. But ultimately, it wasn’t for me. Maybe it will be for you.
- Love interests meet, like each other right away, kept apart by external forces, and then one or both die by the end [↩]
- Spoiler, they live but are essentially dead to one another for a good amount of time until the ending [↩]
- Unless the author is actually biracial, something about it just feels so incorrect [↩]