Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, Book 1 of the Wayward Children series, was one of the final books I got out of the library before everything shut down due to pandemic. And the subsequent books in the series were the very first ones I requested once the library moved to “curbside pick-up” options. Because this is an amazing series.
The series centers around Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, a boarding school for children (or teens, really) who have returned from magical lands. Stories like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz focus mainly on the adventure and end when the child gets home. This series picks up what happens next, when children try to fit back into a world where no one believes their stories of where they’ve been.
I love virtually everything about this series. It gets a little gruesome for me in spots and I don’t love that – but I love everything else. The concept is brilliant; I always love stories that take a new angle on something familiar, especially an angle that is somehow both new and obvious. As soon as it’s said, I don’t know why it hasn’t been thought of before – but it wasn’t.
