**This blog contains adult language and description of...ahem...adult activities.**
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to have the story completely and utterly spoiled.
Book Description: Danger's come a-knocking... Someone's been watching Tana closely, but he's a lot closer than she realizes. From intimate moments to lazy afternoons on the couch, he's secretly seen it all – and fallen for her along the way. The problem is that someone else is watching too and his obsession with Tana is a lot more dangerous. When a man claiming to be her front door enters her dreams to warn her about an imminent threat to her life, Tana initially chalks it up to her weird late-night snacks. But she rethinks things when her earnest visitor insists he's also ready to protect her – in exchange for one hell of a favor. When Tana trades her best line of defense for an unlikely supernatural ally, the threat lurking beyond her apartment hallway starts getting desperate as the law closes in. Can her inhuman companion save her from the worst of humanity or is too late for both of them?
This book was published in 2023 and this is my first time reading it. The cover is nice and discreet I guess. I have no idea what to expect from this book, so let's just dive in.
The trigger warnings for this book include door knob insertion and wood putty use.
We begin with Door. He tells us that he isn't sure when he fell in love with Tana but it definitely happened. He really appreciates that she never “jiggled her key uncomfortably or twisted the knob too hard”. I can see how that could make him fall in love with her. He really likes it when she presses against him to look out the peephole. Once he got so excited that his dead bolt slid out while she was opening the door for a delivery person. She chalked it up to an old building and a front door swelling in the heat.
There's a joke there but it feels too easy.
The apartment that the door guards is located near the woods. The door has seen terrible things happen in the area. The super of the building once dragged a woman into the woods and she never came back out. Door doesn't like Randall, the super, and he keeps a close eye on the man whenever he comes by to “check” Tana's apartment. Tana also seems aware of Randall's predatory vibe and does everything she can to usher him out of her apartment quickly. Randall is getting increasingly angry about this and Door worries that something bad might happen soon.
The next day a cop comes to Tana's apartment. He questions Tana about the woman Door saw Randall dragging into the woods. Tana hadn't lived here when the woman disappeared, so she's no help. After Tana goes back inside, Door hears the police officer talking to dispatch. They're going to search for a body in the woods. Door is worried that Tana is in danger and he isn't sure how to warn her.
That evening Randall comes by to see if Tana talked to the cops. She tells him that they came by but she couldn't help them. He seems satisfied with that and leaves with a leer and a wink.
Later that night there's a storm and the power goes out. Door sees a man come down the hall wearing white robes and some kind of golden thing around his head. He glows and he's dry despite the storm. I thought it was going to be Jesus but it turned out to be Zeus.
Finding Zeus in this book was definitely not on my Smutty Bingo Card.
Apparently Door was made from a tree that grew from an acorn that traveled across the ocean from Zeus's magical grove. The oak trees there are Dryads (wood nymphs), so that's why Door is sentient. He might also technically be Zeus's son because Zeus fucked a knothole in one of the trees while drunk. So part Dryad, part god.
Hera is forcing Zeus to do some good deeds to make amends for his many affairs, so he's chosen his probable son, Door, to help. He's going to let Door convince Tana to set him free. Hera is going to grant Door the ability to visit Tana in her dreams for this one night only. If Door can get Tana to....ahem...be his knothole (if you know what I mean), he'll be made human. Door isn't entirely sure what that means. He's been a wooden object his entire life and he really doesn't know what knotholing is. Zeus doesn't explain. He tells Door that Randall sent a woman to the Underworld recently and Door realizes that Tana might be next.
Zeus leaves and Door has an existential crises. All his life he's assumed that all doors are sentient beings. His world has been truly rocked.
Suddenly Door finds himself in a hazy, undefined space. He looks down and realizes he is human and then very nearly falls flat on his face. He can't figure out how to balance or move in the body. Eventually the haze clears and he finds himself in a classroom. Tana is sitting at one of the desks, entirely nude and desperately trying to cover herself with a notebook.
I think we've all had the “naked in school” dream. Poor Tana.
As the other people start pointing and laughing at Tana, Door rushes forward as best as he can to put his flannel shirt on her. He kneels down to button it up and immediately crashes into the desk beside her. Everyone starts laughing at him instead but Tana helps him to his feet. Holding his hand, they walk out of the classroom together.
Tana asks Door why he feels so familiar to her and he doesn't mince words. He tells her that he's her door and that she's in danger. He can protect her better in human form and he thinks they need to “be together” like she is with her “shivering blue stick” in order to transform him.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I swear on all that is sacred in this evil world that I'm only going to refer to vibrators as “shivering sticks” from now on. This is too good.
Tana is freaked out that he's seen her use her vibrator but she dismisses everything as a weird dream brought on by eating popsicles late at night. Door confesses his love for her and repeats that she's in danger. Randall's already killed one woman and he's used his master key to come into Tana's apartment more than once while she wasn't home. There was nothing to stop him from coming in while she was asleep. She doesn't believe him until he mentions that Randall stole a pair of her panties one of the times he was in the apartment. Apparently she's been looking for this particular pair for months. This really freaks her out and she ends up waking herself up.
Door is back to being a door.
The next afternoon, Tana goes out. As soon as she's gone, Randall comes in and puts some pills in the bottle of orange juice in her fridge. He grabs another pair of panties out of her hamper and sticks them in his pocket. They fall out but he doesn't notice.
Tana comes home and finds the dropped panties on the floor. It clearly reminds her of the dream because she stares at Door for awhile, muttering to herself. Then she gets a little tipsy on wine. She stares at Door again for awhile and then says “what the hell” and goes to her kitchen to grab the Lysol. She disinfects Door's knob, stroking him in a way that definitely turns him on. When the knob is as clean as it's going to get, she disappears into her bedroom. A few minutes later she returns completely naked carrying some lube, a condom and her shivering stick.
Tana talks out loud to Door, telling him to “jiggle in his frame” if he doesn't consent. He definitely consents and he's looking forward to whatever she's about to do. She puts a condom on the knob to hopefully prevent a UTI and then lubes it up.
So I guess this is the doorknob insertion portion of the book.
So I'm looking at my doorknob right now and......how? It's......it's not made for that.
Tana drags over a huge ottoman and then lays on it so she can use her shivering stick on herself. When she's good and ready, she gets on all fours on top of the ottoman facing away from the door and.....impales herself on the knob.
What am I reading? What is my life?
Tana....ahem....knotholes (if you know what I mean) the doorknob until she...ahem....arrives (if you know what I mean) but nothing happens. Door is still a door. She laughs at herself and goes to take a shower.
While she's gone, Door turns human. Unfortunately this means there's a naked man standing where the door used to be and one of Tana's elderly neighbors is highly scandalized. Tana gets out of the shower and sees the large naked man in her living room and understandably freaks out. He rushes to explain that he's her door, as evidenced by the fact her door is missing and the condom is still on his....ahem....knob.
Tana goes to get him some sweatpants that her ex left behind and then decides to make herself a mimosa to deal with this unexpected turn of events. Door knocks the orange juice out of her hand, telling her that Randall poisoned it. Tana believes him because of the panties on the floor. Door wants to call the police but Tana wants to secure her apartment first. She hangs a shower curtain over her doorway and orders a new front door from her phone.
Good thinking with the shower curtain. That'll stop 'em.
While they wait for the delivery, Tana and Door settle on the couch to watch a movie. They discuss what to name him and he suggests Drys because Tana is a huge fan of Idris Elba. She thinks that's a great name even though it's kind of dumb so I guess that's what I'll call him from now on.
I prefer Door.
Tana falls asleep so Drys is the one to accept the delivery. He feels a little weird about being replaced and hopes this door isn't like him. Somehow he manages to install the door and a new knob without waking Tana up at all. When she finally wakes up, she's thankful to have a door that Randall can't open with his master key.
I just kept thinking that this would definitely get you evicted from an apartment. You can't change the locks on a rental. Hell, you can't change the door on a rental.
Drys suggests calling the police again but Tana refuses. They can't exactly explain how Drys saw Randall spiking the juice and she's afraid they might take Drys away to experiment on him or something if they find out he used to be a door. Instead, they go shopping for clothes so Drys has something to wear besides a pair of sweatpants. When they get home, Tana decides to show her gratitude to Drys (for preventing her from drinking the juice) by giving him a handy. He has no idea what's happening to him but she tells him to just go along for the ride. His first orgasm is life altering.
Tana practices good aftercare by cleaning him up and getting him some water. She sits on the floor and has him put his head in her lap so she can stroke his hair. He feels languid and peaceful.
Suddenly there's a knock at the door. Drys tells her not to answer it, but she does, leaving him laying on her floor. Randall pushes his way inside the apartment. He's agitated and ranting about Tana calling the police on him even though she never did. At first I thought he might have a camera or a bug in the apartment but later it's revealed that another tenant called the police and he assumed it was Tana for some reason. She tries to make him leave and he pulls a gun on her.
Drys rushes him but Randall is under the influence of something and is freakishly strong. Tana hits him over the head with a vase but it doesn't faze him at all. Randall ends up shooting Drys and, for some fucking reason, this makes Drys turned back into a door. He falls on top of Randall and then blacks out.
Drys goes in and out of consciousness for awhile. He has impressions of Tana calling the police and of being loaded in some kind of vehicle and ending up in a weird room but everything is extremely hazy. Eventually he wakes up more fully and finds himself laying on Tana's floor again. Tana is talking to him, saying she managed to get him returned to her but apparently months have passed. She fixed his bullet hole with wood putty and cleaned him up as best as she could.
As Tana puts a condom on his knob, she recounts how she prayed to the universe for him to come back to her and Hera eventually appeared in her dreams. She told Tana that Drys could come back if she....ahem....knotholed him again (if you know what I mean).
So Tana does.
And it works again. He becomes human mid-knotholing.
Tana explains that he'll become a door again every month on the day of the full moon but she'll just fuck him human again when it happens. She also hands him a package, telling him some guy in weird robes dropped it off. He said he was family but wouldn't give Tana his name.
Daddy Zeus doing Daddy Zeus things I guess.
Drys unwraps the package to find a wallet, an ID in the name Drys Locke, a passport and a birth certificate saying Drys was born in Greece. Hopefully there's a green card too. There's also a ridiculous amount of cash, an antique coin and a business card for an antique dealer. I guess to sell the coin?
Tana catches Drys up on the news that Randall was convicted of murdering the woman and sent to prison for the rest of his life. He's relieved that it's over and Tana is safe.
The book ends there. I have to say, I liked it more the Squeak. The lore wasn't nearly as confusing. I am a little uneasy around my front door now though. Hopefully it's not solid oak.
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