Have you ever read a book that starts with, 'As a door, I didn't know when I fell in love with Tana,
only that I most assuredly was. It might have been the first time she'd laid her soft fingertips on
the cool brass of my knob.' The woman was too stunned to speak. We're gonna get into
this and stick around for a huge toy giveaway from Bellesa, who this video is sponsored by. Unhinged
is described as a spicy paranormal romance, which BookTok has been absolutely raving about—in fact,
it's an Amazon's top 50 romance ebooks, even further ahead than Sarah J. Maas
with the rave reviews like; 'the door was very charming.'; 'It was lighthearted,
even though there was a murder involved.'; 'I had no idea a door could be so hot.'; 'What the hell
did I just read? Not gonna lie, it was kind of hot though'. Which begs the question—why?
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Imagine a love story like Beauty and the Beast, except the Beast is a door and Beauty lives in
an apartment complex. When I first read this, I thought, 'Oh, it's just gonna be, haha, you know,
a bit of banter,' but what I didn't anticipate was that it actually had a lot of interesting
discussion points on the condition of being human, and I want to share it with you. Okay, let's get
into this. We've got a girl, Tana, who lives clearly in flat number 69. Having this as the
cover really helps you get a clear picture of the scenes that are about to unfold next. Before the
book even begins, uh, we have a trigger warning that 'the story contains doorknob insertion'.
That's when you really know that you're about to unlock a whole new experience.
So, the book's only 80 pages, so viewers really got to slam us with the information. Chapter one
sets the scene, and you find out, POV, you're the door. And we learn that the door is a sentient
being who can also control its movements, and honestly, I'd say the door is a bit
of a perv. The door has this infatuation with Tana, the main love interest, and it's filled
with descriptions about her chest and a lot of use of possessives. 'My Tana did this. My Tana,
my Tana.' 'In the six months she'd spent safely tucked behind my back at night,
she'd never jiggled her key uncomfortably or twisted the knob too hard. No, not Tana. Uh,
we're on page one, and we're already doing the whole 'she's not like other tenants'. We get
the sense that this door has this inherent sort of protective nature about it. Does the door's
protective nature stem from its identity as a man, or could it be an intrinsic facet of its
condition as a door, and thus inherently designed to offer privacy and protection?
On page three, by the way, we find out that Randall, who is like the landlord,
has kidnapped the previous tenant who used to live in Tana's place, dragged her out into the woods,
and now the previous tenant is missing. So it's like you thought you're just here for a little
silly little spicy romance? No, how about murder mystery thriller. So I'm sat here wondering about
like the physics of it all, but also how is the door sentient? And that's when we get to chapter
four, and that's when this book gets even more unexpected than I thought. Let me set the scene,
'lightning sizzled across the sky, mmm pathetic fallacy 'boom of thunder echoing up and down,
the wan sodium yellow of the ancient floodline to winked out in a power outlet.' There's
a strange man who's wearing robes and talking to the door. Who is this man?
It's Zeus. Not only is this a romance and a thriller, but now it's turned into an
18+ Percy Jackson Greek mythology. Hera sent him there because he needs to learn what consent is,
and you're like, 'What are you talking about?' Because Zeus, how do I put this, saw a hole in
a really sexy tree, and he literally seeded the tree, and then an acorn fell off the tree, and
then it grew into its own tree, and then that tree became a door, and the door is Zeus's son. [Music]
I mean, I guess that's one way to do gardening. You know that show on TLC
where that man is really in love with his car? TLC, you need to contact Vera Valentine.
I will give it to her. It's in Zeus's character to be a little bit promiscuous. I have so many
questions. Does this door have memories? How does the door know English? Was the carving
of the wood into a door a really traumatic experience, which is why he doesn't remember
because it's like repressed memory used as a coping mechanism? What is the door's perception
of pain? Am I thinking too much? [Music] We meet the door's daddy Zeus,
and he gives us amazing exposition—the rising climax of the story. We find out that the only
way for the door to be free from his hinges, so to speak, and become a real man is for
Tana to do acts that really should remain behind closed doors, if you get my drift.
She needs to bang the door. So after this revelation, kind of just goes, 'Wow.'
What about my Tana though? Somehow, through the art of magic and storytelling, ends up inside of
her dream as a human, tries to reveal himself to her in a scene that I can only describe as
rivaling Twilight. 'I know what you are,' she says. 'Say it, say it out loud.' 'I am your door,
and I love you.' And the way that he reveals it to Tana, what she has to do,
is a scene that deserves a Pulitzer Prize worthy because he says "you basically have
to do what you do with your shivering blue stick'. If this happened to you,
any sane person would be like 'lol what a weird dream' and Tana basically does that
as well she's like, 'Oh, I shouldn't eat cheese before bed or whatever,'
but then in the next page, we find out that the door's inception plot actually works because
Tana looks at the doorknob, and then she's like, 'ooo? what if i-?? No, no, no, no. Unlessss???-"
And 30 pages in, we have the book's climax. Literally. The shifts from thriller to
romance-really give me whiplash because we find out that Randall, the landlord, has basically
been stalking her, sneaks into her house, breaks in, drugs up her juice, leaves, and is basically
watching her. And then the very next breath, she pushes her sofa against the door, hoists herself
up, and begins to get to work. I'm not gonna put those scenes here because you need to buy the book
if you want to read that. The thing that I find really unbelievable about this book is not Zeus's
sentient door son or her having relations with the door, but is the fact that Tana just speaks
out loud her thoughts. Like, I understand from a structural point of view we are the POV of the
door, so we have to have some sort of access to Tana's thoughts because she's basically by
herself, she's not really speaking to anyone. This definitely does not pass any Bechtel test, but I
did find it quite interrupting to the immersion of the book, particularly when it gets quite meta
because she's like, 'Am I seriously talking to a door? I must be nuts.' Because then I'm like,
'Am I seriously reading a book about a girl who bangs the door? I must be nuts.'
She does her business on the door, and then the door becomes a human, the door becomes
a doorman. Tana is like, 'Where the f is my door, but also why is there a naked man there?' And she
starts screaming, she's like, 'What the heck?' But then ultimately she kind of just goes,
'I'm gonna need two mimosas after this,' and they're like, 'Ah, alright,
we have to go replace the door now,' and I'm just like, 'That's so millennial of her.'
Chapter nine, the door discovers patriarchy. So in chapter nine, the doorman basically
acts like a small Victorian child discovering late-stage capitalism, and he basically goes,
'Wow, the same place that you can buy food, you can also buy door stuff.' They don't really say
what app they're using, um, but I'm assumingit's doordash. They go to a physical store at Costco
or Ikea or whatever, and the doorman comes across a pink woman's tool kit, and he makes an astute
observation. 'Why should you pay more for smaller flimsy things because you're a woman? That seems
silly to me.' He also recognizes that being a woman and being constantly aware of creeps
everywhere you go, is like no way to live, and Tana smiles at him, and she's like, 'Wow,
how amazing that you discovered the core concepts of feminism 101.' And she's impressed because
the bar is truly on the floor, guys.
So we have this human interacting with the world, and we can't really call him Doorman forever,
right? So, come to the act of naming himself, and he recognizes that Tana was like really in
love with this superhero guy on TV, and because he doesn't have a personality, and all of his
actions are dictated by how he can get Tana, he decides to name himself after this actor,
and he calls himself Drys—after Idris Elba. Now, I feel like they could have named him like Dorian or
something, but I think the fact that he names himself Drys is actually very important here
because here we have the main character who, despite his grainy upbringing, seems to have
zero personality traits or independent thought that is not being propelled by his desire for
affection from Tana. And it's like, you know what? Uno-card role reversal. It's kind of nice. We're
like 75% of the way through this novel. There's not much tension. I feel like the author kind of
knows this. Wait, so she's nailed the literal door and also the doorman. So, mission accomplished.
Wasn't there a mystery thriller almost murderer plot that we need to wrap up still?
Because in one paragraph, you're reading about them boinking, and then in the next paragraph,
the landlord is rushing in with a gun massive fight scene, they're strugglign, they're fighting.
You're like, 'Oh no, what's gonna happen?' And then Drys turns into a door,
slams into the landlord, and we have the worst trope of all time because he literally just
falls asleep, and everything fades to black.. The next chapter. So after everything fades
to black, clearly, everything magically resolves itself, right? So we find out that the landlord's
gone to jail because they found out that, 'Oh, he actually did murder the previous tenant.'
Manages to convince the police to give her this bullet-ridden door from evidence back. She tries
to fix his bullet wound, and Zeus comes to her in a dream or something and basically tells her that,
'Yeah, your boyfriend's gonna turn into a door every full moon, and you have to jiggle
his doorknob every month with your magic cat if you want him to turn back into a human.' And if
that's not enough, we also find out that the door has a praise kink. And I left this book feeling
a knock-on effect of what this means for my perception of doors from now on. Like that scene
from Titanic, I'm never looking at that the same way or like any scene where handles get jiggled,
you know? I'm just like, god. It's like, yes, it's absurd, yes, the author knows it's absurd,
and it's low-key funny, and I'm just in awe of the many ways that the author comes
up with puns and innuendos. For example, the summer humidity which swells the wood,
the tugging of doors, and the oiling of hinges. 'If I wasn't already made out of wood,
I'd be stiff as a board.' I honestly feel like the author just based this whole book just off of a
pun. I wonder if she just woke up, she looked at her doorknob and thought, 'You know what? Wood.'
After reading this, I went down a little rabbit hole and discovered it's not just door romances.
No, how about pillow romances or "Seduced by the Pumpkin Spice Latte" for your fall-season festive,
or you know- Shrek if you want me to read that?