Every Heart a Doorway : Chapter 7 - End Discussion

[Jennifer, Goodreads Admin]

Finished with the book? Discuss it here.

[Jennifer, Goodreads Admin]

I enjoyed this book. I wasn't expecting so much of a mystery element, but it was interesting to see that paired with the fantasy of the story. My hope is that the other books in this series might actually take us into some of the portal worlds. (I haven't read the book descriptions yet.) I'm very curious about the "compass" of these worlds - and then there's the reference to Kade investigating new, "minor" directions.

Speaking of Kade, I remember the reference early in the book to the people of his portal world being unhappy to discover he was actually a boy. Late in the story, he talks about preferring to stay with his aunt at the school because his parents would rather he be "Katie" than "Kade." I think I had been confused by the first reference. Is Kade trans? If so, it seems that gender roles/expectations is one of the themes of the book because we also have Jack and Jill's experiences.

As for Jack, another interesting duality is how the other students think of her as something akin to the stereotype of the murderous mad scientist. (Definite Dr. Frankenstein vibes!) Jack thinks of herself as just really loving knowledge and that Jill is the one who is a monster. (Did anyone here suspect Jill was the murderer, or was it a complete surprise?)

That duality pops up again when someone is asked if anyone ever fell while running on rainbows and did the person from that world ever wonder what happened when someone fell? In fact, that might have during that moment when Jack said she'd never killed anyone because everyone she experimented on had consented to it.

[Carolyn F.]

Jack and Jill were really strange and I always suspected there was something really off about Jill.

And the Kade/Katie thing, I thought at first it was a trans thing but then later I thought maybe he actually changed into a boy. It's hard to figure that part out.

Definitely a weird book to me. And really very hard to read with the violence against children/teenagers. That was tough.