Every Heart a Doorway

Well this got dark really fast. Which is not a bad thing, it was just a little surprising. This first book in the Wayward Children series was very interesting and fresh. The story of children who traveled to magical lands and came back and were unable to cope with ‘reality' is truly unique. They stay at a boarding school where their parents think they are getting the therapy they obviously need, but the headmistress is actually a previous traveler herself and made the school to help the children either return through their respective doors or cope with the real world as best they can in the meantime. The children have started cataloging the various magical worlds that vary from whimsical to horror and everything in between, being either a Nonsense world (aka Alice in Wonderland) or a Logical world with lots of rules to follow with other possible variances in between. Honestly I was quite captivated by the premise. The characters were good, although not super memorable, mostly because the length of the book being so short really didn't give you a chance to really get to know them. The strength of this book is definitely in the story itself. The surprising part is how dark it gets as it turns into a murder mystery part way through with children being murdered and body parts stolen. Some of the ‘outcast' children use their uncommon knowledge from their respective magical worlds to work out the mystery. Every Heart a Doorway is short, but packs a punch and I found myself plowing through it and actually enjoying quite a bit. I look forward to future books in the series to see where Seanan McGuire takes the story. It ties up in a neat package at the end, but there are definitely many possibilities to explore for sure. Recommended if you don't mind something a little darker, a little different and a shorter read in between the usual fantasy tomes.