Reviews

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

laurenkara's review against another edition

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5.0

Read this review @ my blog Wonderless Reviews

This book is for the people who waited for their Hogwarts letter.

This book is for the people who wished their wardrobe would take them to Narnia.

This book is for the people who wanted to fall down a rabbit hole or have Peter Pan show up outside their window.


If you’ve ever felt like your home was anywhere besides where you are then this book is for you.

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children is a boarding school that presents itself as a place for troubled children to attend. In reality it is actually a school that doubles as a therapy home for children who have stumbled into other worlds and then returned home. New girl Nancy, whose just returned from an Underworld, finds herself surrounded by a murder mystery as her fellow students start to come to grisly demises around her. It’s up to her and the surviving students to find out what’s happening.

Every Heart A Doorway is so powerful for a novella. It’s impacted me more than full length books have. It discusses trying to figure out where you belong and growing up.

“Older than I look, younger than I ought to be. My skin is a riddle not to be solved, and even letting go of everything I love won’t offer me the answer. My window is closing, if that’s what you’re asking. Every day I wake up a little more linear, a little less lost, and one day I’ll be one of the women who says ‘I had the most charming dream,’ and I’ll mean it. Old enough to know what I’m losing in the process of being found.”


As soon as I read the summary for Every Heart A Doorway I knew I had to read it. The concept is something that’s so interesting and it’s hard to believe it’s never been discussed before. We’re always reading books where characters enter a world that isn’t their own, but we never really focus on what happens after. Imagine being in a place where you can be yourself, where you feel like you finally belong and then all of a sudden you’re back in the real world? That ache is the driving point in this book and it really got to me.

I remember desperately wanting the world of Harry Potter to be real when I first read the books. I wished so hard that my Hogwarts letter would show up on my 11th birthday. I’m not even going to lie – I still wish it was real. I would give almost anything for it to actually exist and it’s why I was able to connect so much to the characters in this book. I understand the desperation to get back to where you belong. I have this with music too. Concerts and lyrics are my home. I just want to live at concerts and some lyrics I just want to crawl into and wrap them around me because they get me. They’re were I feel safe.


“For us, places we went were home. We didn’t care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn’t have to pretend to be something we weren’t. We just got to be. That made all the difference in the world.”


Diversity plays a huge part in this book, which is one of the reasons why I read it for #DiverseAThon. Nancy is asexual, there’s another character that is transgender and there’s characters of all different races. It wasn’t forced either. People of different backgrounds are ALL around us so it makes sense to not have every character in a story be white. I had a personal connection with this book more than I was expecting. There was a line where Nancy was talking about being asexual and she mentioned that being asexual and being aromantic aren’t the same thing. I read the word aromantic and I just started crying. It’s the first time I have ever seen the orientation I identify with be mentioned in a book. I’m tearing up again now just thinking about it. Don’t ever try to tell me that diversity isn’t important. We all deserve to see ourselves in the media we consume. It also brings up important gender issues.

“Because ‘boys will be boys’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Lundy. “They’re too loud, on the whole, to be easily misplaced or overlooked; when they disappear from the home, parents send search parties to dredge them out of swamps and drag them away from frog ponds. It’s not innate. It’s learned. But it protects them from the doors, keeps them safe at home. Call it irony, if you like, but we spend so much time waiting for our boys to stray that they never have the opportunity. We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women.”


The writing style presented in Every Heart A Doorway is magical, whimsical and dark. This is not a light-hearted, cute fantasy/fairy tale. It really focuses on a dark side of that genre that is overlooked. However, that said – while it is heartbreaking, there’s comical moments too. Atmospheric, haunting, beautiful and captivating are some other keywords I’d use to describe the writing in this book.

The world building was incredible. What was presented in such a short number of pages was amazing. Seanan McGuire created so many worlds and back stories.There were Nonsensical worlds and Logical worlds, among others, and each character had such a distinctive voice. None of it felt rushed. I can normally predict mysteries, but I didn’t get this one until a couple chapters before the reveal.

This book was everything I wanted and more. I can not recommend it enough. I am so excited for the second book!

mandyherbet's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

dormilona's review against another edition

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5.0

Excellent! McGuire is amazing!

matt4hire's review

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2.0

Read it for book club. I’m not a huge fan of McGuire’s generally, but the concept here could’ve been interesting and I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Friends, I did not like it. I felt like the entire book just poked at interesting things and characters, and never bothered to fully explore anything. I still don’t like McGuire’s style. Oh, and the ace representation was poo. At least the last 30 pages kinda picked up.

labunnywtf's review against another edition

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4.0

Read for Book Roast's OWL's Magical Readathon 2019. Subject: Herbology - Read a book with a plant on the cover. (There's trees!)

Hope hurts. Hope means you keep on holding to things that won't ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there's nothing left.

This is one of those books I hear the title of regularly, but whose premise I never really grasped. I added it to my OWLs TBR on a whim, not even paying attention then to what it was about. Once I fell through the rabbit hole* and realized what I had, it swallowed me, utterly and completely.

In the stories, girls fall into fantasy worlds all the time. Alice, Dorothy, those Narnia people. They go and have incredible adventures, and then they return home, happily ever after, with so many stories to tell.

This is all well and good, but what do the people they return to think of their darling's stories? What do they think when their precious child has been missing for years, then suddenly appears again, with unbelievable stories and odd habits? They wanted their child back, but what they have is a clearly traumatized young person in need of therapy, medication, and maybe a sanitarium.

Enter Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Eleanor soothes parents and guardians, explaining calmly that she is very familiar with this brand of delusion, and will get their child back on the straight and narrow. Sometimes the children in her care go missing, but it's fine. That's what runaways do. They run away.

In this school, children are roomed and helped based on the lands they went to. From Nonsense to Logic, Virtue to Wicked. They all have their quirks based on the lands they visited, and all of them, each and every one, wants desperately to go back.

There are no big names here. We're not meeting Alice. There's no white rabbit, no giant caterpillar. We get brief descriptions of where some of them have been, but the most prominent factor in all of their stories is their pain and yearning to return to the land they call home.

Then the killing starts.

There is so much magic here. Some of it entirely gentle, some of it larger than life. I've never read Seanan McGuire, but I'm prepared to finish this series and move on to the rest. The skill level is intense, and the diversity and inclusivity is brilliant.

There's a Harry Potter head canon I've always been a huge fan of, wherein a female Gryffindor first year attempts to climb the stairs to their dormitory, at which time the stairs immediately collapse and the student slides down. Standing, victorious. "I KNEW IT!" Hogwarts acknowledging trans students.

JK Rowling will probably retcon that on Twitter eventually, but Seanan McGuire's fairy tale land does this. A princess goes to a magical land and is kicked out because it turns out he was a prince all along. Nancy goes to the land of the dead and dances with the Lord, who seemingly loves her but respects her asexuality.

Seriously, I loved this. It's just such an incredible piece of fantasy literature, and the characters are exciting. I can't wait to see what's to come with this series.

* Sorry, couldn't help it.

labunnywtf's review against another edition

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4.0

I can't be the only one who finished [b: In an Absent Dream|38244358|In an Absent Dream (Wayward Children, #4)|Seanan McGuire|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1525436165l/38244358._SY75_.jpg|59926216] and immediately turned around to read the first of the series again.

Right?

That's normal, right?

Ugh, this series is just so damn good. She set up so much in this first novel, and I feel like she could write 25 more in the series. Someone make sure she does so, please.

I am extra ready for the next book now.

redoreo's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

3.75

gonzoyen's review against another edition

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4.0

Loved the idea of the story and was really excited when I realized it was a series. The ending was abrupt but I’m looking forward to starting the second book.

jdunn79's review against another edition

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dark

3.0

Darker than I was expecting. Sadness and grief were always present. Mystery wasn’t that hard to decipher and resolution was neat and tidy. 

tauwillow's review against another edition

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4.0

Interesting concept and engaging story. It was a bit slow to start, but I enjoyed the characters and the world building.