Kingdom

I must start this review by admitting I did not finish this book.
However, I do think the idea behind this story is a great one, but I found the writing style difficult to follow.

Kingdom tells us the story of Margaret, an older woman, “stuck in a loveless marriage with her son as her only solace”, who accesses a magical world through a picture on her wall. Of course, all is not well in our magical realm of Kingdom, and Darkness is on the rise, mainly inside our main character.

It is not often we get older main characters in fantasy books and so I must congratulate the author! It was one of the reasons I asked to review this book. It is refreshing to have a character with a life so similar to so many of us
The idea that she can access a magical realm through a picture on a wall might not be a new one, but it is still one we love. Portal fantasies continue to be some of my favourite ones. Added to that the notion that this magical world chooses people in the normal world that are too sad to continue here, I found a warm and cozy thought.

My main problem with this book was the way we were thrown into the world without much introduction, setup, or information.
We start with our character already in Kingdom, things are already happening, characters are not introduced, and most of the information about the world and the inciting events comes from the characters telling us things that happened to them in the past, instead of the author showing us the world, their past and the actual main events.

I confess I was very confused throughout the first chapters, which is why I did not manage to finish this book.
I do think this was more of a problem of execution than an issue with the ideas and worlds behind the story, which I still found to be very interesting.