pretty well written fic with some well-written ideas. 4 stars. weirdly and intriguingly mesmerising in the story.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC. I always appreciate Megan’s thought-provoking stories. I wasn’t sure initially where this story was going, and felt a bit confused. But as I read on, the themes of life, grief and growth really resounded with me. Ayanna was a complex character but I connected with her! The doors appearing still has me a bit miffed but…overall, this was a decent read & story.

I know I’m not really into the story when I start skimming pages, so I decided to DNF.

Thank you to NetGalley and Amistad for the eARC.

I came for a speculative portal fantasy that's more on the emotional side, but I got a meandering ghost story that didn't really focus on anything, and I wasn't vibing with that. I was pretty invested in the first 20% or so, when the story was still about these seven random doors that suddenly appeared across the globe and lead to someplace unknown. I liked how this phenomenon was explored through the perspective of a family, first a glimpse into the life of the parents and later switching to the daughters' experiences with the doors. And it was interesting how the daughters, Ayanna and Olivia, were identical twins with very different lives and different opinions on the whole door situation – one is wary of them, and for the other they are a religion. I was really looking forward to exploring the doors, because they were described as all kinds of weird: some open to pretty landscapes that might be heaven, through some you can hear the voices of dead people, some make people straight up explode. But the book never goes there. After the first part, the story only follows Ayanna as an adult who is handling grief and is figuratively and literally haunted by spirits. That might sound good, but the book was now only about her everyday life, and that wasn't cutting it for me. I think this will work very much for people who often read literary fiction, but I was hoping for way more on the fantastical / speculative side of this story. I also had some problems with the writing style. It's not exactly flowery, but it's also not straightforward and it uses a lot of words for very little happening. Not my thing, but I can see many readers liking this book.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Amistad for providing a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

Ayanna and Olivia are twin sisters, who live separately due to their parents different religious beliefs. Olivia lives with her mother, a devout Christian, and Ayanna lives with her father, a leader in a “taboo” religion that involves 7 mysterious doors that appear suddenly throughout the world and lead to other worlds. When one of the twins goes missing, we follow the other twin as she navigates life without her best friend, while also navigating managing her grief and the grief of all the adults around her and trying to live a “normal life”.

💭 My Thoughts
This was easily a five star read for me, and out of all of the author’s novels, this one has become my favorite. As a lover of science fiction and speculative fiction, I appreciated the way the author wove in themes of that currently permeate today’s society (i.e. race, gender, religious beliefs, sexuality, capitalism), while also incorporating the doors as an unknown/mysterious element. We don’t learn a lot about the doors throughout the novel and I believe that was the point. Despite how the doors came about, the impact on society and religion were notable, and Ayanna and Olivia were deeply impacted by their appearance. This is where the author primarily focuses, and this is what I enjoyed most! The lessons the surviving twin learns on grief, religion, family, friendships, race, love, queerness, spirituality, etc as she matures into adulthood is the story, not the doors, and I enjoyed every single magical page of it. Having finished the book a week ago, I still find myself thinking of the book and what I took away from certain parts. I plan to re-read again and again! 5 ⭐️

✨One of my favorites quotes✨
“When the soil and rock could not speak of Gold, the spirit sang that your love must not be like a net, letting some of your catch fall through. Your love must be as firm as a clasped fist. If you cannot love like this, you do not know love.”

🙏 Thank you NetGalley, Amistad, and Megan Gidding for this free eARC in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, in return for an unbiased review.

2.5 stars, rounded down.

I found this book about twin sisters and a set of mysterious doors to be boring, ponderous, and navel-gazing. I'm not entirely certain if the book suffered from a bad writing style choice (stream-of-consciousness, disjointed) or simply poor editing that created narrative confusion. For example, Part III opens with a time jump that isn't clear until after a few paragraphs; paragraphs themselves occasionally lack a hard return to start a new paragraph, creating unclear passages.

What's a shame is that the plot idea is intriguing, but utterly wasted. Too little of the book deals with the fascinating idea of the doors and the religion, and far too much time on the FMC's endless internal monologues and the paper-thin supporting characters.
Not recommended.

This book was both mesmerizing and heartbreaking. Ayanna’s story gripped me from the start—her twin sister, Olivia, disappears through one of the seven mysterious doors that suddenly appear across the world, and Ayanna is left behind, drowning in guilt. Why was it Olivia who vanished and not her? Her mother blames her, her father pulls away, and Ayanna is left to navigate the emptiness that Olivia’s absence creates.
But the world isn’t as empty as it seems. Ayanna begins to see ghosts, shadows of the past that blur the line between reality and something else entirely. As she searches for answers, both about Olivia’s disappearance and the doors themselves, she is forced to confront her grief, her family’s unraveling, and the unsettling presence of spirits only she can see.
Giddings’ writing is haunting and deeply emotional, blending the surreal with raw human pain. This book isn’t just about the mystery of the doors—it’s about loss, love, and learning to live with ghosts, both real and metaphorical.

Thanks to Netgalley and Amistad for the ARC and opportunity to provide an honest review.

I thought the premise of this book was very interesting, and I was invested in knowing more about the "doors" and the events happening with the two MC's. However, I felt uninterested in the religious culture established around the doors and the MCs' community. I felt that in the in-between moments where I was waiting to find out more about the doors or the missing MC, I didn't feel that I was learning enough about the context or characters to stay interested in the story.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it had that element that I was wanting from the cover and the description. It had that element that I was expecting and thought the characters worked well overall in this concept. Megan Giddings has a strong writing style and was glad everything flowed well in the plot.

The story flowed well and the characters were well developed. I recommend this book and look forward to more from this author.


****Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review****

In Meet Me At the Crossoads by Megan Giddings, my latest review book from Net Galley, the main character is a twin who ends up losing her sister to a magical door. These doors have appeared and opened around the world. After the doors disappear, she tries to continue on with her life but can never forget the doors or what happened to her sister. Also she sees spirits everywhere. Will she ever find out what happened to her sister?

I just finished this book tonight and I’m not sure what to think about it. I liked it but I’m also a bit mystified by it. The characters were very interesting, especially the main character, and I did like how the book was written. It had at times, a dreamlike quality to it. It was a good but I’m not sure what it all meant.

While reading Meet Me At the Crossroads, I always felt like there was a hidden meaning behind everything. The doors weren’t just doors. The spirits weren’t just spirts. It felt like the book was trying to say something that I wasn’t getting. Though perhaps I’m just trying to read more into the book then there is. I don’t think so. I’m a very literal person sometimes and so I went into the book thinking it was about magical doors.

Maybe the book has a message about grief or moving on or something else I’m missing. I’ve lost my father, so I do understand grief. I’m not sure I understand what the book was trying to say though.

It also felt like the characters (and the books possible message) were much more important in this book than the actual plot. The story wanders a bit and at times seems lost and then goes back to its narrative. It is a story that is much more character based than plot based. I did like how it was written, as I said earlier, and I did like the characters. I just wish the story had moved forward more often and wandered less.

And I’m not totally happy with how the book ended. I don’t want to spoil it but it felt like a bit of cop-out in the end. Perhaps an ending that I should’ve seen coming too. I don’t know what I was expecting as the ending. I think maybe I wanted the doors to be more important to the story.

Readers always bring their own bag to whatever book their reading and sometimes they try to shape a book into something and want it to be something its not. I’m not sure what Meet Me At the Crossroad is. I do think its a good book though. I think others may enjoy this book even more than me. Perhaps they’ll find the hidden meaning that I’m missing or maybe there’s no hidden meaning at all. Meet Me At the Crossroads was another interesting experience at least.

Meet Me At the Crossroads will be available on June 3rd, 2025. Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing a digital copy for this review.

3.5 stars. I really wish I could leave the rating at exactly this.

One day seven doors appear in various locations around the world (I love the fact that only three are found, at least immediately, because four are in remote locations. That sounds about right. It’s a wide world out there. In fact, maybe there are twenty doors because a bunch of them are underwater and are never seen. That’s my idea and I’m trademarking it immediately and right here!). Where did the doors come from and what are they? Naturally, if there’s a mysterious door that pops up out of the ether, someone (really multiple someones) is just gonna have to go through it, right? So soon it becomes clear there is potential danger behind the doors.

Teenage twins Ayanna and Olivia are raised separately, one by their dad, whose family worships the Michigan door (in a real religion, no less. They live by the door.) The other is reared by her mother. The sisters have very different relationships with the door.

This was an interesting book. I loved the premise, and I liked the story. I really had no idea what was going to happen. If there’s description appeals in any way you’ll probably like it, as long as you aren’t expecting hard sf…you don’t get that at all. This is more about relationships between people.