I definitely enjoyed this book, but I was decidedly distracted while listening to quite a lot of it, which had an impact on my reading experience. I felt that for the majority of the book the story felt a little disjointed, and every character arc felt very separate. But this could be due to me not paying enough attention to the book and fully immersing myself in it. 
On the plus side I love how our world is brought into this story. Usually with portal fantasy our world is the normal/base world, but in this case it is presented as the weird/fantasy-esque one from Lyra's point of view. A nice twist on the usual trope. Instead of someone from our world being 'dragged' into a new environment and experiencing new things, we see Lyra struggle through our world. And what makes it better is that throughout the first book we imagine Lyra's world as if it were our own, and then that idea is thrown out the window when she experiences our reality.