seanan mcguire every heart a doorway series

One wants the characters to go back to their true happy places, but at the same time the relationships that McGuire sets up between them are so fleshed out and touching that I couldn’t help hoping that they would stay together on earth instead. It is difficult to know what to root for. We are pulled in to the world with the characters who are at once sympathetic and flawed. McGuire crafts characters distinctly, even those who only get a few paragraphs of time in the story. Shortly after Nancy’s arrival, sinister happenings at the school threaten its very existence, and it is up to Nancy and her newfound companions to solve the mystery and save their home. She was a wanderer as well. Their worlds were where they belonged, and each of them long to travel back to them one day. Eleanor, on the other hand, understands their truth. The children at the school are sent by desperate parents who believe their children have suffered traumas and are making up fairytales to explain them. Each student at the school traveled to a different world with distinct markers, though the similarities are what causes cliques among the teens and makes outcasts of some of their peers that traveled to dark worlds like Nancy. Through her eyes we meet the various students of the boarding school and their headmistress, Eleanor. This tale centers mainly on Nancy, a new arrival to the school who traveled to the Land of the Dead, full of pomegranate juice and stillness. This story is a strong beginning to The Wayward Children series. This is the premise of Seanan McGuire‘s Every Heart a Doorway, a beautiful novella about a boarding school for wayward teenagers that have passed through these portals. Then imagine if there were a special set of people that were shown doors that led to other worlds, where they stayed awhile only to be thrown back into ours.

Imagine for a moment that the world we live in is one of many.

Seanan mcguire every heart a doorway series