Every Heart a Doorway

Two stars! That's crazy you say? Is it really? I don't know, perhaps it's just me. I have my reasons of course.

Let me first say what I think she did well. I think she picked an interesting premise. Having children who have gone to other worlds, Alice in Wonderland style, opens up a lot of possibilities. Her prose is quite good.

As far as the things I didn't like, here we go.

Protagonist:
Nancy is our main character, but she doesn't really do anything, or add anything to the story that supporting characters don't do by themselves. All she wants to do is go back. We find out about her sexual orientation, and god knows why, because it doesn't play much of a part in the book.

Antagonist:
We don't find out much about the antagonist. It's a character that's more or less just in and out in a flash. There's no mystery behind this character. There's no build up.

Contradictions: There are several contradictory statements in the book. I'll mention three here, but there were more, and I got lazy to write them down.

1. Nancy says early on that she expected other girls to be a certain way about the places they went to, but in the same chapter it was clear she had no idea there were other travelers like her
2. Don't have hope you'll ever go back is an early theme, but when Nancy asks how many have gone back the answer is... We don't know. But some people go back. Eleanor knows or three. Later it's obvious it happens a lot.
3. “There a reason you were all pulled in to worlds that suited you so well” is a general statement Elenor makes about the children and their worlds. However, if you look at the second school where the children want to forget, and some of the children having bad experiences in their world; not everyone was suited well for their worlds.

Character development:
Very minimal. I didn't feel close to any of the characters. There wasn't much build-up so when they get killed, so ? I didn't care.

Main plot and resolution:
Given the premise of the book, she could have had so much more fun with the main plot than what she did. OK, someone goes wild and starts slaying the kids. But it feels very abrupt. And so does the ending. Nancy stands still, sees the killer, and by the time she tells anyone, they already were in a position to know. So again, what's Nancy good for? She could have done something to work out who the killer was. Nope. She and another character saw it, and the other character was already in a position to say who.

Conclusion:
I'm puzzled why this book got so many awards. Good for Seanan I guess. It gives me hope I can churn out something pretty shallow and get fame and fortune too. So... good for me too.