Every Heart a Doorway

2.5~I was prepared to love this, and kept waiting to love it, and I just never did. Here's some main reasons why:

–Representation: While I appreciated the diversity, I didn't always love how it was incorporated. It sometimes felt detached and heavy-handed, like: “I am asexual. This is what it means to be asexual.” I like my fiction diverse, but I also like my fiction more subtle than that. I should note, my interest in gender and sexuality could make this more of a personal preference than a fault of the book. Maybe what seemed ham-fisted to me is just accessible. I do get the need for explicit representation.

–Pacing: Intriguing premise aside, I felt like the book ended right as I was finally getting a sense of the characters and story. Characters who had barely met and were in a period of upheaval (keeping it vague to avoid spoilers) were acting as though they had well-established unspoken relationship dynamics. Very little happened in the first half of the book, but so much happened and then was resolved in the last few pages.

I just feel let down. I can see the appeal in the tone and the group of characters.
Unfortunately, I don't think I liked it well enough to continue on with the series.