Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Where the Drowned Girls Go

C.A.W.P.I.L.E. = 9.43

This might be my second fave of the series yet (the n°1 being In an Absent Dream).

I loved reading from Cora, we get Regan again, and Sumi, and it all makes sense and no sense at all, and it's beautiful & painful, wonderful & tragic.

The haunting of trauma, the lenghts one may be willing to go just to make it go away...

How knowing something doesn't mean that it's fixed, that the conceptual knowledge of something does not mean you know it by heart, it does not make it true for you.

The struggle between feeling good with your body while peers around you try to shame you for it. Turning your body into your own enemy.

Trudging the line between what makes a Hero and what makes a Monster, in Where the Drowned Girls Go we embark on an adventure with virtuose villans and wicked heroines.

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bookworm_leilani's review

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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emilyacres's review against another edition

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funny hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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wren_rainbow's review against another edition

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3.75

What I liked most about this book was that it explores and goes into the dark side of having a door and the consequences. Not all doors leave you wanting to go back. Some leave you in horror or even with PTSD symptoms, bitter, and angry. Some doors take more from you than you’d expect. I wonder if this was a lead up to the next installments. There’s no way you can introduce the new school, Whitethorne, and a new character/ role and not expand more! This installment focuses on Cora and discussed topics such as; fat phobia, suicidal ideation and attempts. This is not one of the feel good magical Wayward Children stories we’ve had in the past.

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constellation_library's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

It follows Cora, who we've seen in a previous book, and she is dealing with hearing voices of gods from one of the worlds she has visited, calling her to come back, but it isn't her world, so she doesn't want to go. She ends up transferring out of Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children to a place called Whitethorne Institute that is essentially the opposite of West's home, and instead of validating the experiences of those children who went to other worlds and holding space for them to maybe return, Whitethorne Institute is all about reintegration into "normal society" through denial that the doors and worlds the children visited were real. Cora chooses to enroll in this school because she wants to block out and forget about the gods that speak to her, but she discovers that Whitethorne is not what it seems.

This was a good read, but not my favorite of the series by far. I think it probably ranks just above Across the Green Grass Fields, which is my least favorite of the bunch. The story was definitely different from what we usually read, which I do think was a nice change up, but some of the characters were really annoying to me, which made it hard for me to care about them, and the logic the MC was using was so flawed from the start, that I just could not buy into it. There was also flippant discussion of suicide, which while I feel that it was necessary and drove a point home that needed driven there, it still made me super uncomfy. There was also a lot of fatphobia from characters adjacent to the MC, and even though it was addressed and addressed well, it was incessant and was just difficult to read over and over again.

The atmosphere was well done, the story's pace moved right along, and the plot was enough to maintain my interest. I listened to it on audiobook and the four hour length was nice and snappy. I was also pleased to see some familiar faces apart from the MC in the story, and I am excited to see what the next adventure is for the Wayward children.

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aberdonian67's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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