(4.5/5, rounded up)
Portalmania by Debbie Urbanski is novel-in-stories-ish & is as bizzare as it is erudite. I'll call it...sci-auto-fic horror w a dash of memoir.

For the first 30-ish pages I was fairly confused. Anyone who has read Marlen Haushofer—that's the kind of confused. I had an inkling the content was well within my grasp, I just needed a sec to adjust to her way of thinking & the accompanying flow. This is going to sound so ridic, so hear me out. They both share a vibe similar to how I'd imagine feeling if I came across a cool, super nice, magical troll lady under a bridge. & she told me a bunch of incredible stories I had no reason not to believe. There's just an air of respect and believability that forms around her words, no matter how strange the story they're telling.

The discovery that turned this collection on its head for me? Urbanski's Story Notes at the end of the book. You know how as you're reading, you naturally become curious which descriptions, situations, relationships, etc were transferred over as-is from the author's life? Debbie does the work for you. Each story has a correlated note including some or all of the following: resources for stats, personal experience, who helped in brainstorming, reviews & misunderstandings that came up when the story was previously published & her responses to them, closure of the gap b/w
what's written in the story & what message is intended. It's so cool, I've never experienced anything like it.

Hope I haven't done this a disservice by not getting to content yet...
Marriage, asexuality (sooo much rep! I applaud Debbie for this esp bc it can still seem to be a novel concept to some), parenthood, finding yourself as an adult, growing into who you are becoming (or have always been?), motherhood (SAHM esp, which I love), coercive s3x, desire, neurodiversity...Ooh, politics!! That was my fav story actually, Long May My Gap Be Bright!

I had a lot of fun reading this. It feels really weird to say that, considering how dark it got at times. But it's the truth—overall I had fun! This is so uncomfy to say lol I feel so bad about how much I liked it terms of Story Notes nonfic Debbie, but for funky author Debbie I'm pumped!

Can't recommend this enough, esp to anyone who loves Her Body and Other Parties, The Wall or Wake Up and Open Your Eyes!

Portalmania was dedicated "To anyone who has needed a portal"
Is it fair to say the pursuing of that need is how we all ended up on booksta? Of is booksta the portal itself?

Thank you bunches to Debbie Urbanski, Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the physical and DRC!

One of the reasons I decided to prioritize short stories this year was because I knew this collection was coming as I had absolutely loved Urabanski’s writing and thinking in After World. The stories in one are connected somewhat conceptually through portals or themes of transformation, even though there is never a perfect description of what a portal is and how it works, but despite the weirdness the persons depicted manage to feel so well fleshed. My two favorites from the collection are How to Kiss a Hojacki and Long May My Land Be Bright. The former is an incredible crash course in people absolutely not being left alone to be themselves. The latter captures our political divide so well and I definitely think I read it at a perfect amount of vulnerability to appreciate it. Urbanski also doesn’t shy away from dark portrayal of things like domestic abuse and delivers strong Ace and neurodivergence rep. It was very hard to walk away from this collection without a lot of emotions and I fluctuated between anger for the way the world is and hopefulness via a shimmery escape portal to a world where things could be a bit better.

This collection will be a love it or hate it proposition but it must be read one story a day not all at once. The concept of portals has fascinated and Urbanski uses them as an escape for her characters, women who have issues mostly with sex. They feel very much the same- and I"m not sure if this is the intent-and the echos are reduced by separating the experience. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For serious short story fans.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. Perhaps this isn't a completely fair review, as I had just finished The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown, which is chock full of portals. I had a difficult time recognizing the portals in some of the stories in the Portalmania collection, and I'm not sure I understood the point in some of the stories. There seemed to be a strong emphasis on women who are asexual or who no longer wish to have sex with their partner. I have no objection to those feelings or this subject matter, not would I ever dispute the reality of that situation. But is this always something that would lead to a portal? I was not prepared for that to be such a strong theme in this book. I get that a lot of the people who wanted to be elsewhere, go through/look for a portal, felt perhaps disenfranchised from the world they were living in, but sometimes the characters really were going through a mania of sorts. The writing is excellent and the stories were interesting, so four stars. But I think I may not be the ideal audience for this collection.

This ARC was provided by NetGalley and the publisher, the opinions expressed herein are strictly my own.

This book is dark, filled with heavy themes, honest truths, and sharp prose. I took a long time to read this book, not because I didn’t like it, but of how to process it. A lot of it is picking up things so core to our internal fears that it becomes challenging, but in a good and necessary way in our often distracted lives. Marriage, parenthood, our own identities are the central subjects of this book, and Urbanski certainly takes them to dark, heavy places. But there is something to how this book offers the truth and connects it through the stories that is creative and smart. It’s unlike anything I’ve read before and I will continue to think about this book. The particular elements of parenthood are really moving. The authors notes at the end are really necessary to confirm the intended themes of each story. This must have been a challenging book to write & Urbanski has hit a true classic that I hope people will be able to dig deep and read.

Absolutely loved this collection of stoties. The mix of sci-fi with real world issues really worked for me. It left me with lots to ponder about big life questions, yet I still had a blast reading it. The best mix of feelings.

I really liked this series of stories because I haven't read many sci-fi pieces with female protagonists, much less sci-fi stories with female protagonists AND female authors. There are common threads that appear throughout all of these stories but they're far from repetitive, and they weave together to form a fascinating portrait of women on the verge. The verge of what? It depends. Breakdown, breakthrough, escape, disappearance... these women are all in the process of becoming. Whether that's a good thing or not is up to the reader to decide.

I appreciate NetGalley and the publisher for access to a digital ARC. My honest review is my own opinion.

Debbie Urbanski does a fantastic job in writing this collection of stories, it had that feel that I was looking for and thought it was fantastic to use different types of stories. The concept was wonderfully done and was engaged with each way the stories were told. I enjoyed how good Debbie Urbanski wrote this and left me wanting to read more.

Did not like this, so I will not give it too much of my time on my review.

All the stories felt repetitive ad nauseam. Didn’t feel like a story, felt like a collection of words on a page. Quite boring and unenaging. another half-done, contemporary collection of stories to check off the list.

3.75 This collection of stories has a lot of sentences that we feel like highlighting. Some are sad but relatable but very like human condition. Has a good balance of slice of life sci-fiifi. I have always wished for a portal since I was a young girl. I found them in books, this one is a great example.

"I am changing into something else! Something that cannot have sex..."
Asexual representation.

I wasn’t able to finish reading this book, despite pushing myself. I made it to around the 80% mark before it all became too much.

The stories themselves, taken individually, are okay. A few of the early ones would slide quite nicely into famous lit mags. I loved Urbanski’s novel, After World, and it was also intense—but not in the raw, personal, and repetitive way of this collection. I could handle the same story told over and over, but like the song says, there are fifty ways to leave your lover. I wanted her to just go already. And then I felt like a heel for thinking that when she got to the suicidal ideation. It’s not a book for the casual reader, is what I’m saying. It's a book about trauma and the misery of trying to cope with marital rape and asexuality and unwanted motherhood. It's about being trapped.

At first, I thought maybe the portals themselves were emblematic of negative space. The things missing from the protagonists’ lives. Things like communication and boundaries and consent. Or maybe they were symbols of vaginas--slices shining and desired and full of potential. But, then we reached the motherhood stories, and as an autistic mother of an autistic son, I felt unfathomably depressed and alarmed. This is a horror collection, and that's not what was marketed or blurbed when I chose this title (although I see it as a tag, now, and I wonder if I missed that or it was added after feedback).


By the time the author appears to break the fourth wall, I’d had enough, but I kept going because I truly do love Urbanski’s work and wanted to trust where she was headed. And then the character neglected and abandoned another little boy, and I was done with it. I’m not sure what Urbanski was trying to tell us in these tales, but it feels like a cry for help, not a short story collection for the general public. And if that's not at all what's happening--if this is truly all fictionalized and imagined, and I've misinterpreted it--then be forewarned at how dark and despairing the subject matter will be.

I'd recommend Urbanski's novel, After World, instead of this one.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read and review this advance copy.

I absolutely adored this book of short stories. And the author notes at the end was a cherry on top!

#netgalley

Welp, that's probably the most misleading description/cover/title I've ever come across. The short stories aren't terrible when each one is viewed on its own in a vacuum. The problem isn't that they're terribly written or have offensive themes or something. The problem is that they're all the same and aren't what the marketing for this book promised me at all. This book should not be called Portalmania. It should be called Rapingasexualsmania. Which is not a book I wanted to read at all.

There are almost no portals here. The portals that are here are all the same exact metaphor for how some bored, boring lady hates her life or whatever. And she always hates her life because she's asexual and her husband is raping her. And that's it. That's the whole anthology. Over and over and over again. I read it, because I got the ARC and felt dutybound to do so, but I wanted to quit about a third of the way through and spent most of my reading time mentally muttering "IhateitIhateitIhateit."

And sure, I feel a bit bad for complaining because clearly the author is going through some shit and also cares enough about her reviews that one of the short stories is her complaining about her reviews. But man, this was a terrible reading experience.

This is my first time reading Debbie Urbanski and I found her writing captivating. The subject matter of the first 5 stories varied greatly, although all centering around the ideas of escape and polarization. I found the second half of the collection a bit more tedious as we began circling the drain of one major theme, but I think that was also kind of the point. The dread and ennui of some characters lives bled through the pages and left me with a sense of doom - and I loved it. The Dirty Yellow Golden House actually broke my heart, though and I will be thinking about those characters for a long time. I will definitely be seeking out more Debbie Urbanski in the future and highly recommend this collection of short stories for anyone who loves speculative fiction, asexual protagonists, lawfully evil witches, and deep space.

“I have always considered familiarity to be the most stable form of love.”

I had mixed feelings about this story collection, but I was grateful that an early copy was offered to me. First of all, I LOVE the cover. I'm glad to see such heavy Asexual representation in general, and the author is very vocal about the fact that she is a self-insert in her own work and writes about her personal feelings and experience even though it's technically Fiction.

Other positives: The writing itself was good. I liked the strange theme of portals and wanting to run away to other worlds/not belonging in this one, and the way that this theme linked the stories together. That was a cool idea. I liked the piece about the witch, though it seemed unnecessarily punishing towards the protagonist, and I also liked the one about the service that will replace you with an AI version of yourself to keep your spouse happy. I think that there is some beautiful use of metaphor throughout the whole thing.

Overall, though, these stories became repetitive quickly. Most of them were very long, overstayed their welcome, and contained huge, unbroken paragraphs. Even though many of them are related either through characters or topics, I felt like I was reading the same one over and over. Many of the endings sadly didn’t work for me, either. They were either too abrupt, difficult to understand or simply lacked impact. I think they went over my head most of the time. (Author Debbie Urbanski herself even comments on this at a couple of points, talking back to her critics in a way that seemed a bit aggressive. The general attitude came across as, "If you're questioning what I wrote, maybe you were just uncomfortable." The reality is that I understood the core situation pretty well. I'm kind of afraid to criticize anything in my review, but I always want to be honest.) Urbanski plays a role in several of her stories and breaks the fourth wall, speaking directly to you, the reader. This was interesting from the standpoint that it gave me insight into her personal experience with Asexuality, but it made things a bit too meta and interrupted the immersion as well.

I admittedly skimmed quickly through one story because it was a thinly veiled metaphor, (if veiled at all), for our current political situation and I just wasn’t in the mood. It felt like reading the news, which I don't want to do, either. Yes, I realize it’s a privilege to try to ignore reality right now even for a moment, but why do you think I’m constantly reading books? Realism is going to slip in every once in a while, but this was too much. (I noticed that another reviewer skipped this story for the same reasons.)

Honestly, even though there was a lot in here that I could relate to on a very personal level, there was just as much that I think I didn't get. *That was probably my fault, not the author's.*

These stories are bleak, frustrating and not an enjoyable experience. They are designed that way. All the men are insufferable. (There's an entire story about marital rape.) Urbanski is writing from a real, painful place, and pretty much all of these protagonists are unhappy.

“I always knew it was wrong to call me desireless. Sometimes people have desires so strong that they can affect the shape of reality.”

Thank you to Netgalley and to the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Biggest TW: Sexual violence, harm to children, domestic abuse, *Marital rape, Self-harm

I randomly stumbled across this book one day and was drawn in by both the cover and the description. It was definitely a unique reading experience and not like anything I’ve personally read before. I liked that the stories touched on various important topics, such as asexuality, motherhood, being transgender, politics, etc. while maintaining a sense of nuance that really makes you think about what you’re reading. I found myself dissecting the stories a lot even after I finished them. One that particularly stood out to me was LK-35-C - it was definitely one of the best and most thought-provoking stories I’ve ever read. I don’t usually buy physical copies of books after I read them digitally but I will definitely be buying this one when it comes out.

I am not usually a fan of short stories, but this book changed my mind. I laughed, I cried, I was angry…the whole spectrum of emotions. To me, great books make you feel things, and Portalmania did just that. I felt seen. Writing was fantastic, each story was memorable, and I am looking forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Phewwwwww boy.

Portalmania is a short story collection where every story "rhymes" with the ones that come before and after. It feels like each story in some aspect shows the same family, just in different worlds and within different situations. The characters are never exactly the same, but by and large there is an asexual wife, a husband who really does like his now asexual wife, and some kids. That seems kind of demeaning to these character who are so much more that those descriptions, but you'll have to read the collection to see those other sides.

The stories almost always showcase a character who feels as though they don't belong on this planet. That life through a portal or in the stars was where they are meant to be and how these large emotions that are inherently distancing affect all the people around them, especially their family.

All in all a really good collection, that feels more cohesive than most which I think only enhances it.

A series of short stories that include the themes of portals and asexual protagonists. So not go on expecting a light-hearted romp, these stories contend with heavier themes and I found several to be thought-provoking and ones I'll likely continue to mull over later.

If you enjoy speculative fiction with challenging/hard to read topics, give this a try

Thank you to Simon and Schuster for an ARC on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. This book was published on 5/13/25.

Debbie Urbanski’s Portalmania is a bold, unsettling, and thought-provoking collection of speculative fiction stories that explore themes of identity, escape, gender roles, and the unsettling nature of human relationships.

The central theme—portals as both literal and metaphorical pathways—creates a fascinating throughline across the stories. Some function as escapes, others as ominous warnings, and a few as reflections on societal and personal struggles. The stories range from eerie sci-fi narratives to deeply emotional explorations of marriage, asexuality, and coercion. LK-32-C stood out as a beautifully nuanced depiction of neurodivergence, while The Dirty Golden Yellow House had a gripping and almost surreal quality that lingered in my mind.

Urbanski’s prose is sharp and fearless, often breaking the fourth wall or presenting perspectives that challenge the reader’s expectations. While some stories felt repetitive in theme, the collection as a whole is undeniably compelling. The mix of dark humor, discomforting realities, and speculative elements makes for an absorbing read.

Final Thoughts: If you enjoy speculative fiction that isn’t afraid to ask difficult questions and make you a little uncomfortable, Portalmania is worth the read. Fans of Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone will likely appreciate its eerie, thought-provoking nature.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.