This has strangely become the year of doors for me.

Ten Thousand Doors of January.
The Starless Sea.
Every Heart a Doorway.
Exit West.

Maybe my hopes were too high; I have a fancy for doors these days, and I loved How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.

But this book fell flat for me. It had so many lovely, highlight-able lines, but I thought Saeed was a boring nostalgic sad-sack and I thought Nadia was an uppity idealistic weirdo. I also thought the doors came in too late to the story. I was grounded in a world where Saeed and Nadia were the romantic heroes but then it suddenly became a story of the immigrant experience. Neither would have been a problem, but the two stories didn't blend well.