This was delightful and I am delighted. Now if you can please direct me to more regency romances with cross-dressing heroines and magic i would be even More delighted. Objectively this is not a perfect book, character development is not really something that happens a lot and the plot is sometimes Too Convenient but it's a fast, easy, light read that will most probably make you smile at least once or twice. I know it made me smile.

This book was absolutely delightful! Kat is a great heroine and i warmed to her instantly and her relationships with everyone (but especially her two older sisters) were so beautifully shown that i wanted to hug the book to my chest and rock it back and forth a little bit.
Seriously: Sisters acting like Actual Sisters is what i want and need in my books and this book provide
ALSO: you might know im a sucker for romance by now and this book has side plots ALL about Romance and i cry because they were SO well done
as you can guess i recommend

this was a very good book I'm just not sure if i read that at the best point of my life?
This will be less of a proper review and more me just spilling my thoughts in the hopes of reaching a conclusion.
But there is no conclusion, like in this book, there is just debate, and the constant circle of action and reaction. This isn't a criticism, after all this is only part one of three i wouldn't expect a conclusion to be reached by the end of book one i was just.
Unsatisfied.
It seemed that there was more to be said, more that should have been said, work that had to be done that no one ever did.
I have never wished to inhabit Plato's Republic. Like the philosophers of the Enlightenment, with whom i have usually very little in common, I don't believe there is a standard of Good which human beings should strive towards and when they reach it they should stop. We grow, we change, what was good yesterday isn't necessarily good today. So there was some distance between me and the two female narrators of this book (the third, the god apollo, is too different from me to even try and compare) anyway I read this book detached, more as a thought experiment than as a novel, and was delighted at the reality of the characters, especially Sokrates who was -for me and for the Just City itself- a breath of fresh air.
But however beautiful this book is, I was left wondering. Was it just a good invention, a pretty trick, a thought experiment doomed to fail from the start something that all of us readers knew? Or was it a work of pure imagination, bringing something entirely new to the table, making us open our eyes, see the world a little differently?
It was a good book and i think it deserves the 4 stars (3.5 and rounding up) and I think it could be a revelation to some people. Not so, unfortunately, to me.

rtc when I am a little less furious at what i was forced to read

3.5 but narrowing down because meh

This book felt like walking home after getting caught in a thunderstorm, taking off your wet clothes, and get into a nice, hot shower. And no, I am not just talking about the diversity issues, although, thank you seanan mcguire for giving me Kade and Nancy, thank you thank you thank you
I'm talking about the book itself, and the stories it tells.
There are worlds, other than our own, as every fantasy reader knows. And you can access them through doorways of one kind or another. The kids in Every Heart a Doorway have all fallen through doors like these and then have been spat back out again for one reason or another, into our own little world. They are not happy and how could they be? They went to a Faerie or an Underworld, a Wonderland, a magical kingdom, they've killed goblin princes and been turned into mad scientists there is nothing these kids can do to forget because they don't want to.
This isn't Susan, "choosing to walk away from Narnia", no. Theirs is a greater tragedy. Because they want, they ache, they need to return.
And what Seanan McGuire does and she does really well is, in fact, validate this desire.
This isn't a book that will tell you to get your head out of the clouds and get to work on how to be normal again.
This is a book that will tell you that yes, maybe you can go back, you really, truly, can go back to the place where you belong and have always belonged and you don't owe this world that doesn't know what to do with you anything.
And I didn't know how much that was something I needed to read.
The ending, when you read it, might seem a bit unsatisfying at first.
It did to me.

Spoiler

What do you mean Nancy goes back? But what about Kade? What about the school? he was making plans for the future wasn't she? She was learning to let go! It READS unsatisfying. But is it really? This is a girl who will be happy again. She was accepted back. She is, once again, at that place where she was happy, exactly as she was. What better happy ending could be hope for for her? What other happy ending is there?

Thank you for this book.

fun and a quick read for a lazy day but not anything exceptional

I expected too much from this book, and it is not to blame for this 3 (well, 3 1/2) rating. I wanted the magic of Summer and Bird, recaptured, but Summer and Bird was only as magic as it is unique and to ask for a copy would be unfair.
This book, on its own merit, is a good faery novel, full of details and little nods and fairy makings and i am glad I read it.