Book Review: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

Rating: ★★★★★

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: Tor

Publication Date: April 5, 2016

This first installment of the Wayward Children (because yes, there’s more) basically consists of the fairy tales you know and love turned on their head, modernized, and made awesome.

When Nancy originally went missing, her parents were frantic. What they didn’t expect was to find her again in the basement, nearly a year later, claiming to have spent time in the Halls of the Dead, where the Lord of the Dead is waiting for her. Unsure about what to do, they send Nancy to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children to be “rehabilitated.”

This home, though, is unlike any other. All of the children, like Nancy, have gone through their own doors and visited different worlds, each classified between Logic and Nonsense, Virtue and Wicked. Most of the students, like Nancy, just want to go back to the worlds that cast them out, the worlds that had come to be their homes. Only, very few students ever find their door again.

The odds seem even less in their favor when students start turning up dead. Someone in the school is murdering students for body parts, and it’s anything but a fairy tale.

• I read it in one sitting. Not because it was short (okay, maybe a little because of that), but because I, too, was kidnapped. Too overdramatic? Well, anyway, I couldn’t put the darn book down, no matter how I tried. It made for some nice, light reading, quick to get through, over far too fast because, wouldn’t you know, I enjoyed it. And when you enjoy something, there’s just never enough. Especially at 165 pages.

• Helloooo diversity, my old friend. I actually really enjoyed the variety of characters in this, particularly Kade’s story. I thought it made his background so much richer to find that he was transgender and was actually banished from his world for being a boy when they had wanted (and thought they’d kidnapped) a girl. It brought a whole new level to the stories.

• The narration is delicious. It’s got the perfect blend of character thoughts and actual omniscient narration that actually makes the writing feel airy and light and easy to read. It really conjured up the idea of a fairy tale in and of itself, which just brought the story to life all the more.

• Jack basically is my husband, only smarter and female. Probably also better dressed. Which means, of course, that I find her endearing and charming, whereas everybody else (including the other characters) finds her creepy and off-putting. C’est la vie. I loved the role she played in this, and every scene she was in was a true delight. I just couldn’t get enough of her.

• The mean girl got her comeuppance. Which I liked because, yes, ma’am, vengeance. If karma’s a not nice lady, well, I can’t help that, now can I? I wasn’t supposed to, but I laughed. And then I was just sad because McGuire is also a mean lady and toyed with my emotions. Actually, I thought it was really well done, which is why it’s getting a mention, as it’s a scene that stands out in my mind. The mean girl is, obviously, mean—unapologetically so—but she’s also a person. A young person, even. So even though I enjoyed the brief tryst with karma, I felt really bad afterwards. Silly emotions.

• Sometimes diversity can be a bad thing, too. In this case, I’m referring to Nancy. She’s asexual, which is great, but the way it’s handled in the story is meh. I felt like that narrative was a little forced, because it really didn’t seem to fit in smoothly with the rest of the story. It really stuck out to me, like a puzzle piece forced roughly into an incorrect spot, especially since she had to so painstakingly explain that she is asexual, but not aromantic, and delve into exactly what that means. It felt like diversity for diversity’s sake rather than just the character being the character. And nothing really comes of that admission/realization. It just left me wondering what was the point, if it wasn’t really a defining character trait and it didn’t impact the plot at all.

• The ending is … anticlimactic? Disappointing? Unfinished? All of the above? I know it’s meant to be a series, so the fact that the major conflict is left mostly unresolved and open-ended doesn’t bother me. It gives me something to look forward to (impatiently, as is how I look forward to most things). Nancy’s arc, however, closes all too neatly and easily and after everything that happened, the “resolution” felt unearned and almost cheapened by these otherwise strong characters that ultimately just get handed their ending.

READ THIS. RIGHT NOW. No, you know what? Don’t even finish this review. I probably just ramble after this anyway. Who cares what I have to say? Just go.

I actually picked this book up because Beneath the Sugar Sky was on my to-read list for 2018 because I loved the premise. But who starts in the middle of a series? Rebels and silly people, that’s who. (Also, 15-year-old me who didn’t realize The Two Towers was book two of Lord of the Rings.) So, of course, I started with this book, and I was glad I had the second one, because I read them both in one day and it was so worth it. The series is fantastic, and I’m looking forward to getting my grubby, little hands on the third one.

All in all, this will probably end up being one of my favorite series, even though it’s short. I’m sort of disappointed that it’s so short, because it ends so soon and then the wait between them is forever, and I’m incredibly bad at waiting. I would highly recommend reading this, though. It’s definitely worth the time.

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Have you read any Wayward Children books? Or any other books by Seanan McGuire? What did you think?