3 Stars
Pros: I did like January for all her doe eyed, lid batting, naiveite.
Cons: Everything was so melodramatic to January but to me, I was like, "How is this a surprise?" Maybe I was too jaded and bitter for this book 😅
Full Review
January Scaller, thinks she's just the Ward of the surprisingly wealthy curator of the New England Archeological Society, Mr. Cornelius Locke. She spends most of her time torturing her nanny and reading in the many attics of Locke House, a palatial estate in the Lake Champlain area of Vermont. When she's not causing trouble, she's playing with the local Grocer's boy, Samuel and distantly waiting for her Father to return from one of his many and often long trips, procuring strange and exotic treasures for Locke's collection.
She's spent her entire life wandering the endless halls of Locke House and so, when she's seven and discovers a blue box in the Egypt room, she opens it and in it is a simple journal. She briefly wonders about the hows and whys of a journal just appearing in a box but in the true sense of children, she just takes it and begins to scribbles in it endlessly.
When she accompanies Mr. Locke on a business trip and manages to elude her nanny, she wanders in the tall fields of Kansas, or Kentucky, her notebook always at hand. In her wanderings, she's surprised to see that there's a door, just, there, and so, she scribbles in her notebook that there was a girl and there was a door and that the door opened for her.
She feels a shift, as if the Earth sighed, and suddenly, the door opens. She steps onto warm, white stone and a vibrantly bright sun, shining off a whitewashed, seaside town. For reasons she can't explain, this beautiful world that smells of cinnamon and spice is enough to move her to tears and she finds herself blubbering even as she's yanked back into the real world by Mr. Locke himself.
After a good tongue lashing, he throws her journal through the door and then sets it on fire with his cigar. They return from their trip and January is locked in her room until she learns her place. It takes three days but she eventually snaps and after that is a polite, good girl who behaves.
When a mysterious black woman named Jane arrives, explaining to Mr. Locke that she's been hired by January's father, Julian, to protect January, everyone's a bit confused but after awhile things seem to settle. But when news reaches Locke that Julian is dead, not only is Janary's world shattered, but the world she thought was polite and proper quickly turns mean, dark and cold and it's all she can do to survive.
Of course, all the melodrama and adventure ensues. And it was fast paced and interesting enough that it did keep me reading because I was honestly curious. But, January's innocence and naivete could be a bit grating and sigh worthy. She was a little clueless sometimes. Overall though, it was an interesting read and I'm glad I read it.
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