The Ten Thousand Doors of January in Pick-a-Shelf

Sep 04, 2020 Tara rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, 2020-favorites

Soooo when i started this book i was really worried it was going to be a DNF. I could not get into the story and found the writing to be overly flowery and was thinking that if the whole book was going to be like this, i may have to give it up.
The story grew on me though and by chapter 6 i did not want to stop reading it. I got lost in the story of January and Samuel and Julian and Adelaide. Mesmerized by the magic and had to know how the story would end.

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May 21, 2020 Sabrina rated it really liked it

Shelves: favorites, book-club, coming-of-age, fantasy, young-adult, friendship, social-commentary, books-about-books, adventure, read-in-2020

I've had a hard time sitting down to write this review because I am trying to figure out how to describe the book or offer a short summary of the book without giving anything even slighltly significant away.

January Sculler is the ward of a very wealthy and, thus, powerful man, Mr. Locke, whom her father works for. She lives in the mansion on Locke's sprawling estate while her father Julian travels the world retrieving rare artifacts for Mr. Locke and the mysterious New England Archeological Soci
I've had a hard time sitting down to write this review because I am trying to figure out how to describe the book or offer a short summary of the book without giving anything even slighltly significant away.

January Sculler is the ward of a very wealthy and, thus, powerful man, Mr. Locke, whom her father works for. She lives in the mansion on Locke's sprawling estate while her father Julian travels the world retrieving rare artifacts for Mr. Locke and the mysterious New England Archeological Society that Locke belongs to.

Though she is Locke's ward, January is treated like one of Locke's many intriguing trinkets or antiquities and Locke regularly puts her on display at various parties while also reminding January that she is under his protection because the world outside of his house would not be as accepting of her given both her gender and her skin color.

One day, January finds a mysterious book, a book that tells the story of adventures in far away places. Little does January know that the tale in this book will soon be entwined with her own tale and her very life.

For me, this book is both brilliant and problematic. It's wonderfully written; the language is beautiful; the tale that is woven is intriguing, and you cannot help but cheer for January. But I think that the book is problematic because it tries to take on such a breadth of issues and genres. On the one hand, as it is set in the late 1800s/early 1900s, the book is historical in nature. Yet, as the book unfolds, it clearly becomes a fantasy novel and a coming of age story. As you read both January's tale and the book within the book--the book she found--you become aware of the layers of social commentary that the book takes on: slavery, segregation, racism, classism, economic disparity, education, women's rights, marriage equality, and others. It's almost like the author tried to touch on nearly every social issue we have faced over the last 100 years. And it is nearly too much.

Overall, however, I enjoyed the book because I am a sucker for any book that examines the power of the story and the power of words, and ultimately, that is the tale of January and her parents--a tale of the power of language and the stories we tell.

I also really enjoyed the way that January's character developed as well as the way that her friendship with Samuel developed from when they were young throughout the course of the book. I also enjoyed the way her relationship with Jane changed from somone who merely watched over her for her father to more of a friendhsip as January became older.

I was a little dissatisifed with the end of the book because I wanted a few things that were not tied up to be tied up, so in some ways, I hope there is another book that follows the rest of the loose threads to their ends. ...more

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Dec 16, 2020 Nicole rated it liked it

For the first 100 pages, I couldn't figure out why the heck this book had created so much buzz. In fact, I relegated it to the category of "read before bed to put me to sleep because I'm not that interested in it."

I thought of giving up on it a few times, but eventually got interested enough to read the last half in a single sitting. I did like the characters once it got going, but would not be a favorite, and I won't rush to get Harrow's next book. ...more

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