90/100 or 4.5 stars

This was wonderful. The writing style worked and the writing flowed so well. I loved the way Giddings told this story and where it went. I liked how the story for about a third of the time is stricktly on the doors, but it is obviously still a large part of the story. If you actually read the book and see what the author is doing, you will see the doors are there the entire time. This is magical realism at its finest. I will not hesitate to pick up another book by Giddings, and can't wait to see what they do next!

There are many examples in my reviews of when I have struggled with stories that are quiet, atmospheric, speculative; what's frustrating is there are just as many I have loved, and it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what I do and don't like about them.

Giddings is a talented writer, but I think what I struggle with most is the style of their writing--extended stream-of-consciousness exploration that feel like driving a road made of switchbacks. Rather than make the picture more vivid, I just ended up confused. This, I can assure you, is a me thing. I think other titles of Giddings could work for me that are less grounded in magic.

Despite an interesting premise and ethereal prose, Meet Me at the Crossroads unfortunately fell flat for me. The writing was gorgeous but impersonal and kept me from feeling fully immersed in the story. I enjoyed the mystery and lore of the doors but was constantly bogged down reading about a whole cast of annoying, irredeemable characters. I also did not need the author to hold my hand and over explain religious fanaticism, as I live in the US and witness it daily.

Meet Me at the Crossroads is one of those books that lingers. Megan Giddings blends family, memory, and choice in a way that feels haunting and tender all at once. The story pulled me in with its honesty and its edges, and it left me sitting with big questions long after I closed it. Beautifully written and deeply felt.

This is sci-fi that is so much more. It starts with mysterious doors that just appear around the world and people's responses to it. When people walked through the doors, they were sometimes treated to amazing sights and sounds, including loved ones who had passed. Other people met a different fate, seemingly without reason. Where did the doors come from? Where do they lead? Around one of these doors, a cult is born, Pathsong.

Ayanna and Olivia are twin sisters whose family is involved in the new religion. The parents separate because of it, with the mother taking one child - they leave the cult - and the father taking the other. The sisters have been forbidden from going through the doors, but you know what happens when you tell people "no."

Olivia goes missing and Ayanna is left unmoored. She grieves the loss of her sister, but believes that she will see her again. As Ayanna grows up and goes to college, she finds has the ability to see the dead. And then the doors disappear.

My thanks to NetGalley and Amistad for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Meet Me at the Crossroads by Megan Giddings is a dazzling and emotionally resonant novel that blends speculative fiction with a deeply personal exploration of sisterhood, belief, and identity. The story unfolds in a world transformed by the sudden appearance of seven mysterious doors portals to another realm that promise beauty, healing, and wonder, but also danger and unpredictability. At the heart of this surreal landscape are Ayanna and Olivia, twin Black girls from the Midwest, whose lives diverge after their parents’ divorce: Olivia moves in with their devout Catholic mother, while Ayanna stays with their father, a member of a religious group formed around one of the doors.

The central conflict emerges from the sisters’ differing worldviews and the strain on their once-unbreakable bond. Ayanna, skeptical and grounded, is wary of the doors and the cult-like fervor surrounding them. Olivia, more impulsive and spiritually curious, becomes increasingly drawn to the mystery and promise of what lies beyond. Their relationship is tested when Olivia disappears after stepping through one of the doors, leaving Ayanna to grapple with grief, guilt, and the possibility that her sister may be lost forever or transformed beyond recognition. Giddings masterfully captures the emotional complexity of their connection, weaving in themes of faith, autonomy, and the longing for reunion.

The twist arrives as Ayanna begins to uncover the truth behind the doors not just their physical danger, but their metaphysical implications. What seems like a fantastical escape becomes a mirror for human desire and trauma. The novel’s conclusion is both poignant and ambiguous, offering no easy answers but instead inviting reflection on what it means to choose love, memory, and selfhood in a fractured world. Giddings’s prose is sharp and lyrical, and her vision is bold Meet Me at the Crossroads is a genre-defying triumph that lingers long after the final page.

Seven doors mysteriously appear around the world and seem to lead to other worlds or other dimensions. People cannot enter without risking a quick and gruesome death. Intriguing right?

This is what initially pulled me to pick this up. The story, however, does not really focus on the portal aspect, but more on the societal impact and on one family in particular. We mainly follow twin sisters Ayanna and Olivia. They grow up in separate households with different ideologies and have differing opinions on the doors. In an exploration attempt, one of the sisters goes missing and the other must navigate a life of guilt and grief while learning to manage her newfound ability to commune with the dead.

It’s really an eloquent ghost story about sisterhood, family (born and found), and grief. Lots of commentary on religion. It is meandering at times but I really loved the writing/narration and how it all came together.

I was so excited for this book based on the synopsis but after a couple of tries with the digital and audio, I ultimately couldn't get into it. I got about halfway and decided to not finish it at this time. I may decide to come back to it because I was genuinely curious about where the story was going.

Ayanna and her twin sister Olivia - raised apart because their parents divorced when they were young, and gave each girl the choice of which parent they would live with - are identical in appearance and opposite in outlook, due largely to their different upbringings. Ayanna, raised by their father in the community he founded to explore one of the doors, is pragmatic, where Olivia is dreamier and conventionally religious, as she was raised to be by their mother. Together, they enter a door that only Ayanna was supposed to enter, in a coming-of-age ceremony commonly performed in Pathways, her father's community. After that experience, things are never the same.

The synopsis of this novel led me to expect fantasy, based on travel between worlds, powered by seven mysterious doors that appear in seemingly random locations across the planet. Instead, it was a meandering ghost story with strong religious overtones (despite the main character's disavowal of organized Christianity). I'm sure there are people who will read this novel and be fascinated by it, especially by the ability to see ghosts that Ayanna develops after exiting the door, by the philosophical and metaphysical ideas it somewhat explores, but it's not what I was expecting, and it's not particularly to my taste. Due to the complexity of some of the ideas presented, as well as to the death of a major character, this novel is recommended for readers ages 16 and up.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book provided by Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I've really enjoyed 2 novels from Megan Giddings in the past so I was excited to pick this book up. Unfortunately, it didn't meet my expectations. I was expecting this story to be more focused on the speculative element (the doors, the other worlds they go to, why they appeared, etc.) and it does start that way, but then it starts to feel like a typical contemporary story exploring family drama. I found it to be meandering., slow, and not very engaging. I'd try more from the author again in the future though since I've enjoyed other books from her.

Thank you to the publisher for granting me access to an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions remain my own.

Too bad. The premise of this book is really really interesting and the first chapter was super exciting, the kind of chapter that makes you want to keep reading.

But in the end, I just couldn’t enjoy this book at all. The writing style is actually really good, I admit I liked that a lot. But it just didn’t meet my expectations. Turns out, these doors lead people to create some cult or something like that, and I didn’t expect that at all because the synopsis didn’t mention it. I don’t know, I just don’t like stories that talk about stuffs like that. The story also felt like a coming of age one. It follows Ayanna from when she’s a child until she grows up, all mixed with strange beliefs about those doors.

That part really brought me down tbh. I was hoping for more sci-fi, fantasy, or mystery. Not... cult. So in the end, I just didn’t care anymore. I’m giving it 2 stars.

This book was so meandering I got lost, confused, and truly didn't know what the hell was going on after awhile. Lots of talk about grief and religion but still the plot felt unclear.

Thank you to Net Galley and Amistad for the ARC.

I'm fighting myself on whether I should give this 3 stars or 4, so we'll settle at 3.5 stars.

I wanted this story to be more about the doors. Exploring them, but maybe not learning where they come from. Instead, we mostly have a story about Ayanna's grief and the breakdown of her family.

Once I realized where we were going, I adjusted my expectations. Ayanna's grief after her sister disappeared is palpable. We follow her as she navigates college with the new ability to see spirits. Some benevolent, some a little sinister (talking about you Vincent...wtf, dude). The doors have all mysteriously disappeared to wherever and she deals with the prospect of never seeing her sister again, a mother who blames her, and a father who completely checks out and starts over.

CW: strong suicidal ideation, suicide attempt

This went from sci-fi to lit fic. The writing style is engaging with a third-person narrative. We start the story about the doors and what happens when they show up (cults/religions form and the military monitors them as potential threats) then we focus on Ayanna and Olivia's parents, then Ayanna and Olivia's bond, and then Ayanna post-expedition.

I was hoping we'd have a story of Ayanna actively searching for her sister, risking her life to go through these doors. And that's probably what we would have gotten if the doors hadn't disappeared, so we are left with a girl with strong "sad-girl energy" and the friends she manages to form deep bonds with.

Ayanna works with a professor who is interested in the doors and a love interest who knows about the spirits and provides offerings to them. Ayanna even helps some spirits with unfinished business with the people they've left behind. But we don't get enough of this either.

It would have been nice to have a little more focus. I did really like the ending and what happens when the Ayanna's door reappears though.

MEET ME AT THE CROSSROADS was not the book I expected it to be - at every turn, it was tugging on my heart strings in new ways. The portrayal of a complicated mother/daughter relationship is always a hit with me, and Giddings did a great job at creating this. I loved the sister relationship found within here as well. This felt borderline like cult-fiction (though I know it was meant to be seen as a true religion and they had more liberties available to them then what is typically depicted in cult-fic). I wish it could have gone a bit deeper with that aspect.

This is a story about seven mysterious doors that appear in the world, once opened they lead to a different universe.

This is more the story of two sisters Olivia and Ayanna, who go through those doors. It's about choices and consequences and why we believe what we do. it's a story about family, loss, grief and finding oneself.

I liked this one because it made me wonder and think even when i had set the book down

It is a beautiful study that will stick with the reader for a long time.


Thank you NetGalley and Amistad for the advanced digital copy of the book in exchange for my honest review

I’m truly unsure how I feel about Meet Me At The Crossroads, which is similar to how I felt after I finished The Women Could Fly - so perhaps Megan Giddings’ writing style is something that I simultaneously enjoy and struggle with.

I found the first 20% and the last 20% of this book super engaging - which happen to be the parts that focus more on the doors and the supernatural / paranormal aspects of this story. The middle 60% was a very thoughtful exploration of grief, which I felt was meandering but still very well done - I just didn’t particularly LIKE it in comparison to the first and last bits. At the same time, I can’t imagine this story would have had the same impact without that section.

The sibling love, the Ayanna’s guilt, the disappointment in both parents for different reasons, it all felt so vivid, understandable, and REAL. The found family of Jane, Felix, and Stephen made my heart happy for Ayanna, especially when she realized it too.

I do think it will need to be carefully classified genre-wise, as this book is definitely more speculative fiction than fantasy or sci-fi, and the long sections tackling Ayanna’s grief and growth in the middle is ripe for a literary fiction category.

Everything wrapped up a little too neatly and quickly in the end for me, especially after so much drawn out nothingness happening in the middle section, but I was pleased overall and would definitely recommend this book to fans of literary fiction.

This is a genre-defying read. Dark, sci-fi ghost story with a grieving FMC that focuses on strong friendships.

Ayanna and Olivia are twins separated at a young age by their parents’ divorce. Ayanna stays with their father in an unconventional community where mysterious doors appear and disappear at will. When the doors vanish for good, Ayanna is left behind—and Olivia is gone.

What follows is a story steeped in grief. The book captures the disorienting fog of loss, and I especially appreciated the friendships that support Ayanna through it all. Her friends believe her, even when her story sounds unbelievable—and that kind of loyalty is powerful.

The beginning of the book shifts POV frequently, but without clear signals, which made the opening a little hard to follow. I think a bit more clarity would have smoothed readability.

This book really bends genres. Sci-fi readers will love the doors, while fans of mystical ghost stories will enjoy the haunting vibes.

If you’re looking for a supernatural story with a sci-fi element, this is your book!

What would you do if doors suddenly appeared near your home? Would you be interested in opening and going through them or would you just avoid the unknown? Would you study them and hold them in high regard? Or would you ignore them and keep focusing on everyday life? These are some of the questions that Megan Giddings explores in her latest book Meet Me at the Crossroads.

If you are a fan of literary fiction, then check out this speculative work that tells the story of Black midwestern (shoutout to Michigan) twins, Ayanna and Olivia. The doors represent entry to a new dimension, but one filled with beauty and danger. This novel focuses a lot on religion. The twins’s parents are divorced. Their father is in a church that worships the doors and their mother is a traditional Christian. The parent’s religious choice reflect on their upbringing of each daughter since the girls live in separate households with one of their parents. Throughout the book religion and spirituality are a topic of conversation and thought amongst the characters. Black spirituality is also discussed amongst the characters who are Black.

Crossroads also features a found family. Ayanna, the main narrator, feels ostracized by her mother, who favors her sister Olivia. Which I thought was strange since they are identical twins. Ayanna eventually ends up with a found family cobbled together by connections and varied experiences with the doors and Blackness in a predominately white space that they live in. Grief also plays a big factor in uniting the characters.

I thought this was an interesting book that dealt with living your life when you feel guilty after something tragic happens. Giddings weaves family, religion and grief together to create a story that explores the unknown and creates a new space. It will make you think and it will make you ask yourself questions.

A poignant tale of grief, love, and sisterhood.

What happens when the fantastical collides with the intimately human? Megan Giddings’ „Meet Me at the Crossroads“ takes this question and weaves it into a moving, atmospheric tale of grief, love, and the irrevocable ties between sisters.

All over the world, strange, shimmering doors begin to appear - gateways to unknown, otherworldly realms. Some see them as escape routes, others as invitations. For twin sisters Ayanna and Olivia, stepping through one of these doors is, for one of them, a leap of faith, for the other an act of impulse and desperation. But when only Ayanna returns, she is forced to reckon not only with what she experienced on the other side, but also with the unraveling of her already fractured family and with her own survivor's guilt. What follows is a journey through memory, guilt, and the jagged terrain of healing, as Ayanna navigates a world that suddenly feels even more unfamiliar than the one she left behind.

At its heart, „Meet Me at the Crossroads“ is literary fiction cloaked in the shimmer of magical realism and exquisite storytelling at its best - a beautifully written exploration of the enduring complexity of sibling bonds and the quiet devastation of loss. Giddings’ prose is lyrical and emotionally astute, with a keen eye for the unspoken. The doors themselves are an elegant and powerful metaphor, serving as both a plot device and an existential question: What does it mean to leave, to return, or to choose neither? The speculative elements are handled with subtlety; it’s less about world-hopping adventures and more about the internal landscapes we carry within us. Thus, while the novel’s premise suggests fantasy or science fiction, readers expecting genre conventions may be surprised. This is not a tale of epic quests or sprawling world-building. Instead, Giddings uses the uncanny sparingly but impactfully, anchoring the story in emotional realism. The speculative serves to illuminate the psychological and emotional stakes rather than distract from them.

This is a novel for readers who crave depth over spectacle, and for anyone who has ever mourned a loved one, lost a version of themselves, or wished they could step through a door to something - anything - different.

Many thanks to Amistad and NetGalley for the free copy in exchange for my honest review.

"Meet Me at the Crossroads" was published on June 3, 2025, and is available now.

I finished this book, and hours later, I longed to be back with these characters. Following Ayanna over the course of this book brought up so many feelings, and I enjoyed every moment.