emvdw's Reviews (341)

I really liked this book, just like I did Mointains Beyond Mountains". This narrative jumps around in the timeline quite a bit, but to me Kidder pulled it off, it wasn't confusing at all.

We get some cameo's of subjects of other Kidder books like Partners in Health, and Jim O'Connel (Rough Sleepers is on my TBR). We also get some glimpses of Donald E. Knuth, which made me want to read a book about him.

I did feel the ending was rather abrupt and a bit too open-ended for my tastes...

Since this installment of the series was set in the school, just like the first one, I had some of the same issues. Again, the characters are a bit shallow, and the since this one involves travelling through *multiple* doors, the world building for those worlds lacks some depth as well, and is a bit exposition-heavy. Confections is supposedly "Nonsense, but with rules", but what the rules are is never clear. I wasn't particularly invested in the quest. 

The social justice issue of this one (fatfobia) came up more naturally than in the first one, but is not really brought with any subtelty,  perhaps due to the more YA audience. I didn't enjoy this story as much as the first one (maybe I just dislike Confection too much) and think I would have DNF'd had this not been a novella. 

 I confess, I only read this because it promised to be a quick read, the previous one was fairly entertaining. However, I am so glad I did, because I loved this instalment! I think the reduced cast of characters, which were already introduced in the first novella (though this is a prequel), helped focus the story and deepen the investment in the characters and their development. I also really enjoyed the world-building for this one. 

My feelings about the social commentary being forced in the first installment, were completely absent here. The central message about gender roles and expectations and how parents sometimes fail to see their children for who they are was very well done in my opinion. 

To be honest, I was a bit dissapointed by this. The premise is great, but the execution a bit mediocre. The MC has very little personality (beside wanting to go back through her door, but almost all the characters share that personality trait). The political/ideological messaging/social commentary was also a bit on the nose. 

I love the representation, but to me it did not feel like this was brought up organically. You meet a character and they go "HI, BTW I'M TRANS" or "DID YOU KNOW I WAS ACE???" without any context or very little prompting. I recognise that there's a (probably tricky) balance in shorter lengths stories and totally get that authors choose to have unambiguous, clear, canonical representation (instead of the pandering "Oh, yeah Dumbledore was totally GAY all this time" type ret-con), but for me it felt very forced. 

Similarly, with the world-building, there is a lot of exposition through dialogue, which is not really my favourite, it feels a bit forced again. The resolution to the mystery was also a little obvious to me. I did still have fun reading this :).

 I read this book for the first time years and years ago and completely fell in love. I took the Readalong opportunity for an overdue re-read. 

I still loved it on a re-read but noticed more of its flaws this time around. For me, it’s still a 5-star read despite the flaws, but it’s easier to see why others might feel differently about it. 

Some people say this book is “all vibes no plot”, but I disagree with that. It’s definitely vibe-heavy (such delicious vibes) and the plot is slow to get going, but it’s definitely there. Or maybe the plot is slow to reveal itself completely – there’s a lot of mystery. For me, this fits the magical atmosphere of the book. I think the fact that I am a fast reader also definitely helps. I read this book over a few days, so I everything unfolds quickly enough, but I can imagine getting a bit impatient with a drawn-out, mysterious plots. 

In the readalong forums someone @voxlunae mentioned “[…] there is almost no interiority to these characters. The narration remains relatively limited, and we don't get much of the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of characters except what can be inferred by their actions.”. 

I agree that I didn’t feel a strong connection to most of the characters of the novel, something I usually do need to love a book. However, in this one, I think the style is so dreamlike, the characters being less defined works for me. I’d totally get that YMMV on that point though!