Book: 100 Cupboards (100 Cupboards book #1) by N. D. Wilson
Cover Art by Jeff Nentrup
Edition: Paperback
Description:
Lying in bed at night, twelve-year-old Henry York can't ignore the thumping and scratching he hears on the other side of his bedroom wall. He scrapes off the plaster and discovers doors—ninety-nine cupboards of all different sizes and shapes. Through one he hears the sound of falling rain. Through another he sees a glowing room—with a man strolling back and forth! Henry and his cousin Henrietta soon learn that these are not just cupboards, but portals to other worlds.
Rating: 1 star
Review:
100 Cupboards follows 12-year-old Henry York who had recently moved to Henry, Kansas to live with his uncle and aunt Francis "Frank" and Dorothy "Dotty" Willis and their three daughters Penelope, Henrietta and Anastasia. Henry's parents are travel writers and were in South America riding their bikes when they were abducted.
Since Henry's parents were very over protective, he grew up rather sheltered. However, with his parents sort of gone, Henry with a little encouragement from his Uncle Frank seemed to slowly try to do things he normally would not do. Such as discovering a wall of 99 small doors in his attic bedroom. He found them after a little bit of plaster had fallen off the wall and then proceeded to remove the rest of it. He wasn't the only one intrigued by the doors, his cousin Henrietta was interested in learning more about them as well.
The doors were different sizes and shapes and he managed to open a couple of them and found two keys. One key opened another door where he found mail and could see a man walking around on the other side. Surprisingly the second key opened his late grandfather's bedroom door. For the last two years his aunt and uncle were unable to unlock the door and had tried everything they could to get it opened. Apparently, the door would only open with a special key and when Henry and Henrietta unlocked the room they made another discovery, their grandfather's old journal. The journal gave them some information about the doors which they found out were portals. Henry also found out something from a journal entry that made him sort of questions where he came from and who he really is.
After a terrifying experience with one of the doors, the cousins were at odds over what to do with them. Henry didn't think they should continue experimenting with them while Henrietta thought the opposite.
Henry found out that there was one more door (the 100th) in their grandfather's room after Henrietta went missing after going through it. Things went from bad to worse with Henry trying to figure out where she went because the door in their grandfather's room is connected to the doors in the attic. While Henry journeyed through various worlds looking for his cousin, Uncle Frank was getting ready to try to find them, when an evil witch traveled through one of the doors in the attic trying to find Henry. She attacked Frank and Dotty and was going after Penelope and Anastasia but due to quick thinking they locked themselves (along with their parents) in their grandfather's room.
With the witch on the attack, can Henry and his family stop her?
I think my review made this book seem more exciting and interesting than it was. 100 Cupboards was disappointing, it's not often I find a bad read but it does occasionally happens. The writing for this was choppy and confusing and it felt like the author was trying too hard to make this imaginative but the writing really slowed down the story. However, I did like that the author tried to create a unique story but it just wasn't very good. This is a boring story with a lot confusing details while at the same time not providing enough details. It also didn't seem like the story had a clear focus with things happening that didn't make any sense such as the abrupt appearance of a witch. There was no prior indication that there was a witch in the story and the author didn't provide any details about her other than she wanted Henry, so it was a little surprising when she suddenly showed up. The story also started out moving very slow and then proceeded to crawl along until the end which was very rushed. For a book that was only 289 pages, it felt like it was much longer because of how slow, boring and unfocused the story was.
The characters fit perfectly with the story because they have no distinctive personalities. They were either boring or annoying with nothing that would make them interesting. And speaking of annoying, I couldn't understand how this family didn't seem to care that Henry's parents were abducted. No one seemed upset about the situation and Henry even said that he wished he could feel worried. I don't understand how difficult must it be for Henry to try to muster up feeling worried or upset for his parents? It really felt like the abduction of Henry's parents was an after thought to both the story and to the characters. Henry and Uncle Frank have a connection to the cupboards that should have been focused more on in this story but maybe the second book will give it a proper amount of attention that it deserves.
This story had a great premise but it was so boring and poorly executed that I can't see continuing with reading the rest of this series.
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