Every Heart A Doorway (Wayward Children, #1)

by Seanan McGuire

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she's back. The things she's experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West's care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy's arrival marks a change at the Home. There's a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it's up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of things.

No matter the cost.

• ISBN10: 0765385503
• ISBN13: 9780765385505
• Publish Date: 5 April 2016
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 12 July 2023
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Tor Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 176
• Language: English

Reviews

[alindstadtcorbeax]

Star Rating: —> 4.5 STARS ! [Just .5 taken away because a COUPLE parts were just a little too slow moving?]

But most of the book was absolutely wonderful!Fantastical, whimsical, mysterious, dark... AMAZING! Ugh I love portal writing ! This take on it was like a DREAM. COME. TRUE!

I’m SO HAPPY FOR JACK AND NANCY! I so want to know what happens after Jack returns home to revive Jill !
(edit: And I sure did! See: Come Tumbling Down/ Wayward Children #5!!! Woo! PS: I’m on the app right now, will add link when I’m able to use web version!)

I do also think it was super obvious who the killer was right away. Anyone else think so?

I also LOVE Christopher; his bone flute & its/ his ability to make skeletons dance and ‘come to life’ is so fascinating.

And duh. I love KADE SO MUCH! Who WOULDN’T?!

Overall wonderful, wonderful, incredible, wonderful book!!!

[clementine]

Edit 03/24: I'm rounding this down to 2 stars 'cause I just gave Grant's Feedback 3 stars and I don't think they're on the same level at all.

2.5 stars

Hmm... I seem to love what Seanan McGuire's sci fi altero-ego writes, but I did not love this. It's an intriguing fantasy concept, but unfortunately the follow-through just isn't there. The pacing was off, the characterization was flat, and the conclusion was broadcast from a hundred miles away. It's such a shame, because I know she's capable of doing crazy, shocking, thriller-y twists.

[Bianca]

We were twelve. We were curious, and angry with our parents, and angry with each other. We went down, and at the bottom there was a door, and on the door there was a sign. Two words. BE SURE. Sure of what? We were twelve, we weren’t sure of anything. So we went through.

— A weirdly beautiful book about misfits trying to find their place in this world.

[Stephanie]

This is a gloriously weird little book. The pacing felt off at the end (too quick, too forced to wrap up), but solid and unexpected, regardless.

[readingwithwrin]

"Because she had wanted to know what was at the end of the long path between the trees, and because she hadn't wanted to turn back before she understood everything. Because for the first time in forever, she'd felt like she was going home, and that feeling had been enough to move her feet, slowly at first, and then faster, and faster, until she had been running through the clean night air, and nothing else had mattered, or would ever matter again-"
I ended up going into this book with very low expectations because of the size and how much hype was around it last year. I am honestly so glad I did, I ended up absolutely loving it and just wanting to see so much more of each of the students worlds and wanting to know more about each of them.

The main focus of the book is on Nancy, but the few side characters we do get to see I absolutely loved and we surprisingly learned a lot about them in very few words.

"You're nobody's rainbow.
You're nobody's princess.
You're nobody's doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you."
The friendships Nancy makes with Sumi, Kade, Jack, and Christopher were so nice to see. The all went to different worlds, yet somehow they make this wonderful team that helps each other figure out what is happening in the school. I was able to figure out the mystery portion just a few pages ahead of when everyone else did and I'm glad it wasn't a super obvious one for a change.

"So this was the world. This was the place she'd come from - and more, this was the place where she came closest to belonging in this world."

This is a story of the fairy tale worlds we've all learned some about before, with some of the underworlds mixed in the best way possible. It's hard to explain, but it works somehow. The author did an amazing job in not only building so many worlds, but building each of the characters and making us care about each of them characters in a very short amount of time.

I am so happy I waited to read this book until the second one was almost out, because I need to know what happens next!


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[layawaydragon]

HOLY FUCKING SHIT! I LOVE THIS!

Okay, so a few moments I had to backtrack and wonder who's perspective I was reading. But beyond those rare incidents where it could be me that's the problem, everything was perfect.

I'll be back with a full review shortly.

[sa090]

Needed a break from the Seven Wonders series and picked up two books even though I hoped I wouldn't pick anything new, I'm now officially sure that reading two at a time is never a good thing for me because I get lazy, if one is more enjoyable than the other I tend to focus on it instead and my progress is insanely slow because of reason 1 that it's laughable. Sooooooo no more reading more than one book at a time for me lol and without further ado, Every Heart A Doorway was an insanely fun book to read.

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It's been a long time that I read a book that was just a standalone without at least two other books to follow before finishing up the telling of its story so when I heard that this is a standalone I was ecstatic, the books to be read following this one are also standalones, all they share is that they happened in the same verse. This brings in a very interesting outlook to what happens after the adventure is over in books that require their heroes to take a trip to a different world. I really enjoyed the possibilities this unlocked, the multiple worlds that were sort of mentioned here and there with them being either nonsense like Wonderland or Logical ones like JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth for example. That's not where the possibilities end, the worlds are even more diverse when you bring in virtue or wickedness as if they're points of a compass.

Like Seanan McGuire could seriously write as many book as her she pleases with how huge she made the possibility of this world to be. One other thing I enjoyed in this book were how going into these worlds changed the kids entering them, like staying in a nonsense world for too long could make you just as the word implies when coming out, bringing in techniques that only existed in that world to this one or just finding their place to be that their hidden personalities when they were in the real world becomes their only way of living as it should be. This identity issue if you will was such an interesting outlook to the book just for the sake of seeing how different people deal with different things.

The characters are the third aspect to this book that I enjoyed very much, they all had these little quirks to them that makes following one or the other a very interesting event. My favourite by far though is a spoiler in itself but let's just say that the next book in the series is centered on them so that makes me very excited for July, IIRC it's when the next one comes out. The book is pretty short so fleshing out the characters in a very broad way isn't going to happen for every single one of them which is why by the end it feels like there were some who got the spotlight more than others. But like I said before they all have these little things about them that makes them feel memorable in some way, not just names on page or attached to an event sort of thing.

The horror aspect of the book isn't exactly scary, it's more on the creepy side than anything but that didn't really take away anything from my enjoyment of it. As for who is going around killing them, personally I had a strong hunch after the second murder was done and they were discussing it and it was solidified when the "pointing" was done. I didn't expect it to end that way though, seems like people's lives aren't worth much around here but again loved the book very much. Would love to see more world being explored and honestly I just can't wait to see how this continues.

Final rating: 5/5

[Heather]

What happens to kids who go on adventures to fantasy lands when they return home? Obviously, they tell people what happened to them and then they are treated as mentally ill or as the survivors of such horrific abuse that they made up stories to get themselves through their kidnappings. When they don't recant the stories they may end up in a boarding school for their own protection.

Eleanor West takes in these children. She was one of them too. She takes the children who are desperately looking for a way to return to their lands.
How do you come back from that?

As soon as Nancy arrives and starts to get acclimated to the strange people around her, there is a murder. Since she came from the Halls of the Dead, she's a suspect. When murders keep happening it is up to the students and staff to find out what is going on before the authorities find out and shut down their school.

Read this one for the wonderful language and characters. The students are diverse racially and in their gender expressions. The only thing they have in common is wanting to go back home to the magical worlds they miss.

I loved this book so much I read it once myself and then read it out loud to my husband.This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

[lovelybookshelf]

This short novel has a super cool premise: What is it like for children to return to the normal world after spending a significant amount of time in a magical world? If they are unable to reintegrate, they are sent to "Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children." Every Heart a Doorway has a creepy nonchalance about it, a semi-predictable murder mystery, and a little horror (if you get queasy easily, consider yourself warned). It feels like magical realism a lot of times, so I was hooked. The main character is ace, and there's a trans secondary character who plays a significant role in the story―and avoids all the tired tropes you get with trans characters. Fantastic rep, fun read.

[ross91]

This story was lovely. And sad. Really sad.
At times it reminded me of Lev Grossman's The magicians trilogy, with characters who simply want to find their place once again and struggling to adapt with our reality.
The mistery element was the best part of the plot and, while short, the story managed to create compelling and interesting characters.
I just want more.