Pub Date	7 January 2024
Publisher	Victoria Mier/Self-Published
Page Count	541  pages
Genre	Urban Fantasy, Romance, Adult
Goodreads Star Rating	3.99
My star rating	3

Beyond the Aching Door Book Summary

Beyond the Aching Door by Victoria Mier is an urban fantasy novel about a journalist named Raegan who starts working on the case of mysterious (and serial) drownings on dry land. Her research and interest in the supernatural and mythical pushes her into a world she never knew existed, but always hoped did. And there’s a mysterious Unseelie King she feels inexplicably drawn to. 

Beyond the Aching Door Book Review

I’ve been interested in diving deeper into indie published romantasy ever since reading (and loving) Whispers of The Deep. And then this book popped up on my Instagram feed and it was fate — I had to read it. 

Especially since it has one of my favorite tropes, which is (and this is not really a spoiler) lovers in past lives. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t love it as much as I hoped I would. 

It started off pretty great. I loved the atmosphere at the beginning of this book — a workaholic journalist in a rainy, gloomy city, with a case of mysterious and impossible murders. It felt very film noir. But the murder plot ends abruptly at about 15-20% and while I understand why, I wish that was the central plot. 

The prose is pretty decent, but I found that the writing was at its best in the beginning, and devolved as the book progressed. It was a bit overwritten, with endless descriptions of the same or irrelevant things. 

The chapters were poorly structured as well. Each one ended in some form of a cliffhanger, for the lack of a better word. Raegan would decide to go somewhere or do something, or the King would say “We have to go” and all of it would sound extremely dramatic. 

You would expect we’d skip straight to the next scene — Raegan arriving wherever she wanted to go, or the King and Raegan already on the way.

Instead, the scene would continue right where it left off. All the drama and the tension of the moment is lost when you have to watch the heroes go down the stairs, walk around the city, or get ready for a car ride (step by excruciating step).

It creates a lot of unnecessary scenes that bring nothing to the story but take up pages and pages of space. This book would easily be 300 to 400 pages if these were removed. But this is this author’s debut so that might improve with more books. 

I wasn’t the biggest fan of any of the characters. Raegan seemed filled with rage and mean to everyone, which got old quickly. Now, I do understand that her life has been hard and that the author specifically likes writing unlikeable FMCs, but it wasn’t just that she was unlikable. She was also inconsistent. She’d be so angry at certain points, then weak and whiny at others. 

She didn’t have much of a personality (that I got a sense of, at least), and she had a surprising lack of empathy for the people around her, especially the King. She’s also meant to be smart and clever, but lagged in connecting the dots and always assumed the worst. 

The King was equally bland. There’s not much to say about him except that he’s Fey, looks and behaves exactly the way you would expect a love interest in a romantasy to look and behave like, and has shadow powers. He speaks in a weirdly stiff, archaic tone, which is strange considering he’s been living with humans for centuries. 

I did feel bad for him, though, and for Raegan as well. Their pain and longing came through very clearly, and even made me tear up at times. This author is great at writing those feelings, especially when she gets out of her own way. 

But beyond the pain and the longing (from the past lives), I didn’t understand why these two characters like each other now, in this lifetime. They didn’t get to know each other especially well, or spend any time talking about their lives at the moment. Raegan appears to be different in every lifetime, so why does the King keep coming back to her? Why does she like the King (other than he’s hot and she has these irrational feelings for him)? 

She didn’t seem to have any empathy for him either. This man has clearly been through a lot, watching the woman he loved die over and over again for a millenia. He’s clearly keeping a distance so his heart wouldn’t get broken again. 

Yet Raegan insists on hurting his feelings further by telling him she only wants him because he’s there and looks hot, or telling him she’ll leave as soon as he finds her father. She throws constant tantrums whenever he wants some distance, as if he owes her anything. 

Raegan also discards her career very quickly and easily for someone who is a workaholic and loves their job, which I found annoying. 

The way her Seal works wasn’t explained very well either and created some weird scenes. She’d say his name or something really personal that she shouldn’t know, and then forget it the next moment, but it was never clear that these thoughts simply escape her. 

At least for me, it was frustrating to watch her know something yet not apply it — that is, until she explained that the thoughts about her past lives slip like sand between her fingers and she can’t really hold on to them. See, that makes sense and if it was only mentioned in the first scene, it would have been great. 

The plot was a bit all over the place as well. Things happen quickly, then are forgotten, then more things happen, and so on. I had the same issue with Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber. This type of chaotic plot doesn’t work for me it seems. It happens over maybe a week, so that was a bit strange as well. 

Overall, this is not a bad book by any means, but it certainly could have been better. I probably won’t continue this series, but you should definitely check it out. Especially so if you like star-crossed lovers, past lives, Fey (but true to folklore), urban settings, etc. Happy reading!