Cashore's magical realism novel falls flat

      In her latest YA novel, Kristin Cashore (most well known for her Graceling Realm books), tells the story of a girl struggling with grief during COVID-19. Set to be released on June 11th, There Is a Door in This Darkness combines magic with reality in a unique way.
     Wilhelmina Hart is part of the infamous class of 2020. Her high school years began with the election of Donald Trump and they ended with COVID. Now Wilhelmina, like so many of her peers, is in limbo, having deferred college because of the pandemic. Compounding the national trauma of 2016 to 2020, Wilhelmina has wrestled with the devastating loss of one of her three beloved aunts shortly after the 2016 election. This is a loss she felt so keenly that she’s spent the last years deep in her personal depression, only obscured by the seemingly endless waves of national trauma. Now on the cusp on the most consequential election in living memory, Wilhelmina may have found a door in her darkness and perhaps the courage to pass through it, if she can decipher the bizarre messages that keep appearing in her life.
     I really wanted to like this book but I just couldn’t relate to the main character at all. While I loved Wilhelmina’s aunts and friend, Wilhelmina herself just was so self-absolved and confused that I just couldn’t really empathize with her feelings. Due to the time and setting of this book, I can understand why Wilhelmina was characterized in this particular way, but I still found her dislikable and wish there would’ve been more moments with other side characters or an earlier realization from Wilhelmina about some of the positivities in her life rather than constantly have her be a pessimist being mad at the weirdest of triggers.
     I appreciated the way that Cashore tried to showcase grief and coming of age during tough times, but I felt like some of the more supernatural/speculative portions of the book became too confusing paired with the real life events that happened in 2020. I just felt like the balance between reality and fiction in this book wasn’t quite there which led to more confusion than anything else.
     I’m also not a fan of politics being heavily mixed into stories and having such a defined “this side is wrong and the side I’m on is right!” vibe to it and I had to keep putting this book down because of how much the politics of it were frustrating me. Being that this book is set during 2020, I’m sure you can guess what major political event occurred during this time, but it felt like the focus in that took away from Wilhelmina’s journey of grief and lonely instead of adding to it like I think the author intended it to.
     While I could see the ways in which this book might resonate with some people, I just wasn’t one of them and instead found myself struggling to get through certain parts just so I could keep up with the portions I did like. Unfortunately, there ended up being more slow moments than good moments for me while reading this book which wasn’t justified enough for me by the end of the book.

*I received an ARC from Penguin Teen in exchange for my honest opinion.

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