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A review by amysmithlinton
There Is a Door in This Darkness by Kristin Cashore
4.0
Consider for a moment the Class of 2020: the country churning with anxiety, racism, and uncertainty during your high school years, and then you get walloped by the Covid Pandemic.
Like many of her peers, Wilhelmina Hart is taking a gap year: her father is vulnerable to the Pandemic as he has asthma, while her therapist mother has her hands full with patients. Wilhelmina stays at home to care for her siblings and her trio of beloved aunts -- minus the central member, Aunt Frankie, who has just died of cancer. Meanwhile, her best friends are likewise grappling with the reality of isolation bubbles, mandatory maskings, remote schooling, and the escalating stress of the Trump-Biden presidential contest. Wilhelmina is struggling with depression at the loss of Aunt Frankie, a chronic pain condition, and generalized existential dread at what the future of the country will bring.
This novel, tracking the first week of November, 2020, as well as scenes from Wilhelmina's past, brings that mercifully short period of time back in vivid, painful detail. Things are reaching a breaking point, and Wilhelmina begins having weird visions –– shared, as it turns out, by handsome James Wang. Can she and James make sense of these visions? Is it a message from Aunt Frankie? Can she work through her complicated feelings of jealousy of her two best friends in a bubble without her?
Cashore is one of my favorite YA fantasy novelists, so it was a delight to dive into a thoughtful, imaginative, contemporary story that is -- among other honors! –– sure to make the banned books list for certain pearl-clutching audiences. The aunts are not quite aunts, for instance, but an eccentric, loving, and diverse throuple. Wilhelmina's friends –– one biracial, the other a gay survivor of childhood abuse –– are unapologetically enlightened, politically active, and willing to talk about getting therapy.
Wilhelmina is a strong, bright character who reminds me of a contemporary Meg (A Wrinkle in Time) Murry, fully involved in the moral struggles of her time. The magical realism strikes just the right note in counterpoint to the overwrought reality of that time.
Ultimately both hopeful and heart-warming, this is a novel that captures a tumultuous time with grace, reminding readers that there is joy and light to be found even when things look grim. That there is, after all, a door in this darkness.
Thanks Netgalley and Dutton Books for the e-arc in exchange for my unfettered opinion.
Like many of her peers, Wilhelmina Hart is taking a gap year: her father is vulnerable to the Pandemic as he has asthma, while her therapist mother has her hands full with patients. Wilhelmina stays at home to care for her siblings and her trio of beloved aunts -- minus the central member, Aunt Frankie, who has just died of cancer. Meanwhile, her best friends are likewise grappling with the reality of isolation bubbles, mandatory maskings, remote schooling, and the escalating stress of the Trump-Biden presidential contest. Wilhelmina is struggling with depression at the loss of Aunt Frankie, a chronic pain condition, and generalized existential dread at what the future of the country will bring.
This novel, tracking the first week of November, 2020, as well as scenes from Wilhelmina's past, brings that mercifully short period of time back in vivid, painful detail. Things are reaching a breaking point, and Wilhelmina begins having weird visions –– shared, as it turns out, by handsome James Wang. Can she and James make sense of these visions? Is it a message from Aunt Frankie? Can she work through her complicated feelings of jealousy of her two best friends in a bubble without her?
Cashore is one of my favorite YA fantasy novelists, so it was a delight to dive into a thoughtful, imaginative, contemporary story that is -- among other honors! –– sure to make the banned books list for certain pearl-clutching audiences. The aunts are not quite aunts, for instance, but an eccentric, loving, and diverse throuple. Wilhelmina's friends –– one biracial, the other a gay survivor of childhood abuse –– are unapologetically enlightened, politically active, and willing to talk about getting therapy.
Wilhelmina is a strong, bright character who reminds me of a contemporary Meg (A Wrinkle in Time) Murry, fully involved in the moral struggles of her time. The magical realism strikes just the right note in counterpoint to the overwrought reality of that time.
Ultimately both hopeful and heart-warming, this is a novel that captures a tumultuous time with grace, reminding readers that there is joy and light to be found even when things look grim. That there is, after all, a door in this darkness.
Thanks Netgalley and Dutton Books for the e-arc in exchange for my unfettered opinion.