Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests
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. … 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.
PRAISE FOR EVERY HEART A DOORWAY
“Seanan McGuire has long been one of the smartest writers around, and with this novella we can easily see that her heart is as big as her brain. We know this story isn’t true, but it is truth.” — Charlaine Harris, New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series (TV’s True Blood)
“Seanan McGuire once again demonstrates her intimate knowledge of the human heart in a powerful fable of loss, yearning and damaged children.” — Paul Cornell, author of London Falling and Witches of Lychford
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I damn near missed my flight out of O’Hare because I was so immersed. I read a lot and it’s been a long time since I didn’t want a story to end.
I was so intrigued by the premise of Every Heart a Doorway—what happens to the children who travel through portals to other worlds after they return to our world? The execution of this story wasn’t quite what I expected (much darker!), but I still enjoyed it. It was a bit predictable, but in a satisfying and familiar way. I’d definitely recommend it for fans of portal fantasies!
This book was completely unexpected. The premise reminded me in some ways of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and I was expecting a lovely, ethereal sort of book about children who have traveled to magical worlds and have returned with wandering hearts seeking a way back. Instead of lovely and ethereal, this book was sharp-edged and haunting. I felt reading this the way I did after reading The Magicians , where I’d been promised something like Harry Potter and instead got something dark and tangled. I think the conceit for this book is unique and I’d recommend reading it just for the way the author explores something so familiar in such an unexpected way. Just be prepared for more nightmares than dreams, more what-comes-after than once-upon-a-time.
Every once in a while, a book comes along that you know you’ll love it purely by the cover art and the title. That was the case with ‘Every Heart A Doorway.’ I knew based on that alone I would be over the moon reading it and once I read the synopsis I was hooked.
Jen from the Ladies of Horror Fiction crew kept telling me to read this as well. After her and I buddy read ‘Where the Woods End’ together, she told me I absolutely had to get onto reading ‘Every Heart A Doorway,’ and now that I have – she was right.
What I liked: The story follows a young girl, Nancy. You see, some children spot doorways to different realms and plains, and some of them step through and spend time there. Those that return are ‘different.’ Because of this, the parents will send them to Eleanor and her school where they hope the children will be ‘helped.’
The book itself has such an easy flow to it that I found myself engrossed immediately. The story is hard to categorize. Is it fantasy? There are elements of horror. Definitely filled with drama and character relationships. Sometimes a book defies standard categories and this was one of them.
The characters in here are great. McGuire expertly gives us some outstanding children to want to know more about, especially when bad things begin to happen.
The school in and of itself was intriguing. We don’t get much description of how it actually looks, so the reader gets to interpret it as they wish. I suspect it was a standard, square-box, building type structure, but for me, I kept going back and picturing it as a massive tree that was hollowed out and the school built within. Why? I honestly don’t know, but that is the beauty of reading!
What I didn’t like: Completely minor thing, but throughout the read, I had a sense of complete timelessness. Or more accurately – no specific time period that this book was happening in. But at one point a character mentions that they saw something on someone’s Facebook page and that really killed that feeling for me. It doesn’t detract from the story, but for me personally, I really wished we hadn’t have know FB existed in this world.
Why you should buy it: This is part of an ongoing series, but book one reads purely like a stand alone. The ending will absolutely leave you wanting to know more, but as a single read – stunning. This had everything. You’ll go through the emotional rollercoaster with this one and a lot of questions are brought up, with some really great philosophical answers and discussion.
I had such a great time with this one. Now, I’ll need to talk my wife into letting my buy book two!
This book was wonderful, unique, haunting, and whimsical. It’s a book that understands the trials of being a person who cannot fit in to the box the world has made for them, and it it written in a lyrical voice. Well done again, and highly deserving of both the Hugo and Nebula it won. If people like this book, they should read:
If you liked the magic school for unusual childeren, try Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
If you liked the odd fantasy of the other worlds, read Deep Secret (Or really anything by Diana Wynne Jones)
Always feel free to ask me for a specific recommendation!
Did you enjoy reading books about children who travel to magical worlds and have extraordinary adventures there, discovering their authentic selves in the process? I did; I still do. Some of those books shaped who I am at a fundamental level, and passages from them resonate with me emotionally like the scent of chocolate chip cookies.
So when I heard Seannan McGuire was writing a book about children who have returned from portal worlds, I knew it had to be mine. Her body of work, fiction, essays, and music (listen to her album Wicked Girls, seriously!), is drenched in myths, fairy tales, and children’s classic books — riffing on them, turning them upside down and inside out, making them new and wonderful again. She writes about these tales with deep love, but with a feminist and queer-friendly sensitivity that asks hard questions about concepts like destiny, and self-sacrifice, and Noble Blood.
She did not disappoint me in Every Heart a Doorway.
Eleanor West runs a boarding school for children who have returned from their travels, by choice or by force, and find they no longer fit comfortably into their old lives. Whether gone for but a moment or a span of years, parents and friends want the old, familiar child back — and Eleanor’s students want only to go back to the magic land that was their heart’s home.
Our protagonist is Nancy, and the author makes two fairly bold choices with her. First, she’s asexual, though she does enjoy flirting and romance. Hurrah for representation! Second, her portal world is not one most people would enjoy, as it is literally Hades, ruled over by a darkly elegant Hades and Persephone, where unquiet ghosts haunt the halls, and still tranquility is prized above all else. But Nancy thrives in the courts of the dead, and truly finds it a haven.
The snippets of description of other portal worlds are one of the highlights of the book, as are the attempts to index them. The side characters also shine, from the energetic and whimsical Sumi to the apprentice mad scientist to the boy who makes the skeletons dance.
It’s the characters and the worlds of their hearts that are at the core of the book, rather than the somewhat thin murder mystery plot. If that intrigues you at all, read this book. You won’t regret it.
———-
“Her parents loved her, there was no question of that, but their love was the sort that filled her suitcase with colors and kept trying to set her up on dates with local boys. Their love wanted to *fix* her, and refused to see that she wasn’t broken.”
———-
What a great and unique story this is! I shouldn’t use an exclamation point, like I’m surprised – Seanan MGuire has a demonstrated track record when it comes to great and unique stories – but I felt it was warranted nevertheless… The first time I read this, I enjoyed it but didn’t quite get it. Then I saw that the second in the series had come out, and I read that because I liked the concept (what happens to the children who wander into other worlds – in fairy or other tales – when they come back?). Then I reread this one and wow, what a difference… I wonder if perhaps the order of the two books should be switched? Or if maybe the second should more properly be captioned a prequel? Because it really added a depth of understanding to the first that I felt was somewhat lacking after my first read. Regardless, this is a great series and well worth your time – but be warned that you may find yourself scurrying to read this one again after making your way into Jack and Jill’s world (Down Among the Sticks and Bones)…
For some reason I had never heard of this book. I had seen it while scrolling and yet it had never really caught my attention. Until someone in a Facebook group asked for that one series about a home for people who’ve returned from other worlds and this title came up. And all of a sudden the book moved to the top of my wishlist and after a lovely picture on my instagram timeline last week I decided to get the first book to see if it was worth ordering the rest.
The book was a little shorter than I had expected, however, despite the fact that it’s not really big it tells a really nice and complete story. Of course, there are countless of possibilities for more details and more explanations, but I actually think it’s quite fitting that some parts our left to our imagination and that the book leans on its atmosphere way more than it leans on its words. It somehow feels like there is so much more for me to discover.
I was also quite surprised by the horror elements in this story. Maybe when I was younger these horror elements would have scared the hell out of me, now I actually quite enjoyed them. Once again, they were simply very fitting. These kids came back from the weirdest worlds. Of course their way of thinking and acting has changed and differs greatly from mine. And of course not all of those worlds, and therefore the way the kids changed, are pretty.
Despite the fact that we don’t get all the details about the characters we meet, where they come from, what exactly had happened to them, who they were before they discovered that one door, it still felt like by the end of the story they were my weird friends. I worried about them, feared for them, wondered who I could trust and who not and felt sad when I reached the end and had to say goodbye to them for now.
As soon as my new credit card period starts the rest of the series will be ordered!
This is good. It has the sort of engaging voice that gradually reveals what’s happening. By that time, you’ll realize you ended up rooting for the character voice so much that you prefer finishing it in one sitting.
There is an unanswered question the lurks in the shadows of most portal fantasy novels – what happens to the children who find magical worlds after they’ve returned to our world? And what if those children never wanted to return in the first place? Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children is the place for them, a school specially created to help reluctant returnees to the real world readjust to the mundane and learn to move on from the magical adventures they’ve had and the lives they built in other worlds. Our protagonists have wandered through fairylands and nonsense worlds filled with candy as well as the halls of the dead and dark worlds full of mad scientists and vampires but what they have in common is each is equally desperate to find a magical doorway which will take them back to where they feel they belong. Some among them might even be willing to kill their fellow students if it means getting back home. This book is bizarre, hilarious, creepy, incredibly creative and, above all, a beautiful meditation on what it means to belong. I adored this book and I cannot recommend it enough.
Every Heart a Doorway
(Wayward Children #1)
by Seanan McGuire
This is a strange but interesting book. Children that traveled through portals into other worlds and have returned years later in their new worlds find only months have gone by in their original world. They are changed forever from their experience. (Living with vampires, mad scientists, the underworld, living with the fae, and more.)
The parents believed their child were kidnapped and now somehow broken. They take the kids to the Home for Wayward Children. There, the staff knows what really happened. This book is about a group of these teens together, sharing a trauma of leaving a place they learned to love, even if it was somewhere horrific. They all want to return.
But someone is killing off the students and why? A great story, mystery, fantasy, and characters. Definitely going to follow this series!
I am so delighted I finally got around to picking up this series. An absolutely brilliant concept executed with delectable voice and a surprising amount of well executed world building for a novella. A diverse cast of characters with complex motivations. On page asexual MC and trans SC.
This story was whimsical and magical. Each child has had a fantastical adventure?, to which this story investigated what happens when they return back to their lives. I enjoyed reading about each child and the messages of inclusion. I am eager to keep reading this series!
This book was a dream! I can’t believe I let it sit on my tbr list for so long.
The cast of children were well developed and raw characters. They all carried their experiences in a way that shaped their personalities. So well done, and believable. These kids are the outcasts that we know, the people that spend their life searching for the place they belong. The lgbtqia reps were flawless, they flowed into the story seemlessly.
I was not expecting the murder mystery at all, and did not pick the correct culprit either. The final twists were well laid out, and crumbs were dropped now that I look back at the story, I just didn’t catch them.
And finally, all the social commentary was spot on. It really shined light on our twisted view of raising children, and more.
If you love The Ten Thousand Doors of January or The Starless Sea you’re going to LOVE this book. Has the same whimsical fantasy air about it. I can’t wait to read the next in series.
This was the beginning of a great adventure. I did not know what I was getting into when I chose to listen to Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, and I have no regrets. I have seen this series around and I have seen many recommendations to read it. When I found it on audio, I had no more excuses. I jumped into reading it without any idea what it was about!
The writing in this book is amazing. The author takes you on a journey from beginning to end. You learn a little bit more and more along the way and the adventure never ends. Each turning of the page leaves you with more questions than answers. More excitement for what is to come and what has already happened. I devoured this book and I am beyond excited to see what the next one is about.
This book follows a young girl named Nancy, who has found herself enrolled atEleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Which has a friendly sign reading:
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests
Nancy finds herself surrounded by other children like her; those who have traveled through magical doors to other lands. However, as Nancy comes to find out, not every world is the same and not every child comes back to their birth world unmarked from their magical home.
We follow Nancy as she tries to navigate this new school and learning about adapting to where she is now after her adventure is over. However, not everything is as it seems.
Such good writing and plot intrigue in this book. I will absolutely will be continuing the series.
I loved this book. It had me hooked from the beginning. I cant wait to read the rest in this series.
Totally new, totally different. Everything was unique and kept my attention. Even when nothing much happened, I was listening carefully.
I’ve read this book several times and have yet to review it? Let’s just say this is one of my favorite books! I love the diversity and I love the characters. Nancy might be my favorite character in this whole series. I love that I want more from this story but at the same time, it’s complete. I don’t need anything more for completion. I need more because it’s just so freaking good!
No matter how many times I read this story, I always discover something new. This time it was all the foreshadowing. Every Heart a Doorway is brilliant, beautiful, and my favorite of the series (I think). The characters are some of my favorite in any fantasy (YA or otherwise). They’re written so exceptionally well. Each character feels important to the story, and when there’s under 200 pages, that’s an impressive feat!
Peter Pan + School for Good and Evil + And Then There Were None + Seanan McGuire
Have you ever wondered what happened after “The End?” If YOU were Alice, would you really want to leave Wonderland? This is a story of those that were sent back to their worlds, kicking and screaming. They want nothing more than to find their door (rabbit hole/window/cyclone/etc). Eleanor, headmistress of Wayward School wants nothing more than to take them into her care, away from parents who will never understand) and help them find their doors. But when new student Nancy arrives, tragedy strikes..and again..and again..
I ABSOLUTELY adored this book! I gave 5-stars to Over the Woodward Walls and EHaH blew it out the waters! I don’t know how Seanan does it! She is able to tell THE best stories in less than 200 pages! And her language and world-building is second to none! This book was gorgeous, creepy, mysterious, funny, scary, and inclusive!!
This is my favorite read of the month and have already ordered #2 for January!
One note: I have seen some reviews saying this is MG. I would just be careful about letting younger ones read, as there are f-bombs and talk about adult toys. I would say this is more a fairy tale for teens or adults.
Buy this for yourself or someone who has always wondered what happens after “The End.” Or, if you’re twisted, get it for someone who believes fairy tales only apply to children.