Every Heart a Doorway

This was ok, though I don't think I'm going to continue with the series. I thought the premise was great, a school for children who have been recovered from various magic worlds, but the book was too short to really delve into any of their stories. Also, it's a fantasy novel that turns into a murder mystery halfway through, which is kind of where it lost me. Day two of Nancy's stay at this boarding school and her roommate is murdered, and the successive murders are addressed by the headmistress with lines like “Stay together and try to survive the night.” There is a legitimate serial killer in your school, you need to do better than that. And since there is a relatively small pool of characters I was left assuming they were either going to get murdered, or were the murderer, and since they had all just been introduced I really didn't care either way.

Also, Nancy's fantasy world sounded incredibly boring, I honestly could not understand why she wanted to go back. It was a land of the dead, and her duty was to stand statue still and let them pour pomegranate juice against her closed mouth? Gee, where do I sign up.

CAWPILE SCORE
C-6
A-8
W-8
P-7
I-7
L-8
E-8
TOTAL-7.43/10
CAWPILECharacters.Characters were great. sometimes felt a little one dimensional, but in a short story with th epurpose that it has, it was fine and didn't bother me. AtmosphereLoved the Wayward home, that everyone wants to go back to their "home". WritingThe writing was great. with alliteration when called for and perfectly succintPlotPlot was unexpected in this novella, but the plot fit the story well.Intrigue i guessed who was doing the killing with only a modicum of why but my knowing didn't change my enjoyment of the story. The intrigue of High Nonense vs Low Nonsense vs Logic vs Candy land was quite unique and funLogicLogic was consistent, and well thought out. nobody acted out of character. and they did what they wanted. EnjoymentGreatly enjoyed my time at Westwoods home for Wayward Children

I think in order to appreciate this book, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief. If you like magical realism and books like ‘Alice in Wonderland', then this is for you and could be a new favorite. Personally, I don't usually like those kinds of books however knowing the kind of book it is really helps. This book has key themes that really help of misunderstood children, and had great LGBTQ represenataion.

 I really liked this book. I think it was very cleverly written. While I was reading it I thought probably Alice needed some group therapy when she returned from Wonderland. Also Wendy when she came back from Neverland. I think no one will be able to go to a magical, wonderous place to then come back to the “real” world and carry on as if nothing had happened. That's why I think this was such a great premise for a book.
I also think that the characters are very interesting and so detailed. I can't wait to read the second book in the series. 

Interesting idea, beautiful writing, and interesting characters in the beginning.

Then, the main storyline and peripheral characters just lagged in comparison to the world building. I felt detatched from most characters except for Nancy and Jack. Towards the end the writing unexpectedly turns mechanical and procedural. The murder mystery lacked tension and its resolution was was anticlamactic at best. Nancy's resolution didn't feel emotional or earned.

Enjoyable read but I expected to rave about it with the way people talk about this book.

Ik ben absoluut verliefd op het idee, de besproken thema's en de diversiteit in dit boek, maar het kon me toch niet helemaal betoveren. Nochtans is het geweldig origineel en heeft het de perfecte combinatie van onzin en duisternis waar ik steeds naar zoek in sprookjes. Misschien komt het doordat het zo'n kort boekje was? In ieder geval ben ik toch nog reuzebenieuwd naar de andere verhalen en werelden in deze serie.

I was never big on Narnia and I think that's what really attracted me to this book. Every Heart A Doorway is what happens on the return trip. Seanan McGuire created something special with this story on how this trips to distance, magical world effect those who visit them. It's just a fresh take on these types of stories with a lot of uniqueness added into the mix. Every character has their own story and motives. I found myself finding favorites every chapter. The inclusion of positive gender and sexuality representations was a MAJOR plus for me. I honestly didn't know how this book would end or even how a chapter would end. I appreciate it for not being predicable. All around, fantastic take on a subject we know well. I will definitely recommend this book to others!

This review is also featured on Behind the Pages: Every Heart a Doorway

Nancy never felt like she belonged. She longed for something more in her life. When a mysterious door opened for her, she walked into the world of the dead and never wanted to leave. She felt at home among the stillness and peace of the dead. She learned how to slow her body down, to be on the edge of death itself but still breathe. And yet when she has finally found her true home, she is sent back to the living world to decided whether to stay among the living or the dead.

To Nancy's parents, her story of living among the dead is a fantasy. Something told when the true horrors of kidnapping hide beneath myth and fiction. She is sent to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children to recover. There she will find children just like her, castaways from fantastical worlds.

Seanan McGuire has created a beautifully dark novel filled with murder and mystery. Each child has their own story to tell. And some have darker secrets than others. I was glued to this book. Listening to it on audio, I put my headphones in whenever I could. While you won't learn about every child's back story, they all had a common element of something missing from their lives. I felt for each and every one of these children. The longing for acceptance and the desperation they felt struck me. If I had been in their shoes and I found my perfect world I certainly would never want to go back to the real one.

When I came to the end of this book I was left aching for more. I need to know more about these children and the worlds they discovered. I feel like I am one of them, grasping at straws trying to enter a world that I didn't want to leave. I can't wait to read the rest of this series!

This has been on my tbr for a while now. I am so glad I finally picked it up! It's a super short story and I didn't want to put it down.

Eleanor West runs a home for wayward children. Children that have went through doors to other realms that just want to go back.

I really enjoyed this and plan to continue the series.

2 1/2 stars for something that I really wanted to love, but it sadly fell short of my expectations.What happens when you mash together the whimsy of the coming-of-age theme in [b:Peter Pan 34268 Peter Pan J.M. Barrie https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1337714526l/34268.SX50.jpg 1358908], the magical world of Narnia in [b:The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 100915 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1) C.S. Lewis https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1353029077l/100915.SY75.jpg 4790821], and the nonsense-filled Wonderland of [b:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass 24213 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass Lewis Carroll https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327872220l/24213.SY75.jpg 2375385]? Well, you get this diluted, rehashing of beloved classics that don't hit home in quite the same way. The author's strange way of alluding to these classics by bashing them, especially when it comes to C.S. Lewis, was unnerving to say the least, and disappointing. It is a bit of an unspoken rule that one should not refer to a work in the same genre, especially not a defining one, in a negative, satirical way. While the idea of portals to other worlds in the fantasy genre is nothing new, to deny the influence of C.S. Lewis is just downright insulting, regardless if you agree or disagree with this Christian views. That would be like denying the fact that Tolkien is the father of high fantasy... plain ridiculous.I had wanted to read this book for the longest time, but I never seemed to be able to get to it. When I saw that it was finally available at my public library, I jumped on it and read voraciously, but I ended up being disappointed by my earlier high expectations. The premise sounded like a bit of a prequel (or maybe an alternate world) to [b:Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children 9460487 Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1) Ransom Riggs https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546430481l/9460487.SY75.jpg 14345371] (which I also wasn't a huge fan of), so maybe I should have expected things to be a bit lackluster. There's no denying that McGuire writes really well and effortlessly paints vivid scenes of faraway worlds, but the narrative itself is where this story suffered for me. I would have liked for Nancy (or any other child) to return to ‘their world' and get a better understanding of how the portals work, but instead I was given a slow slice-of-life story of a handful of jaded teens who complain about clothes or food. Typical. [note: maybe this happens in another book, I have no idea since I haven't read the rest of the series, but it doesn't happen in this one.]The attempt at diversity here was, whilst honourable, token at best. It felt like the characters had labels slapped onto them just for the sake of it without actually diving into what makes them stand apart, their difficulties, etc. This is something that seems to be recurring in lots of post-2010 publications wherein authors attempt to divesify without fully exploring these topics. Perhaps it is due to the current social climate we live in that authors feel the need to prove themselves as open and ‘woke' as possible, but it comes across as fake if the diverse characters are simply used as placeholders for diversity.Overall, while I did enjoy many aspects of the worldbuilding and the writing, this novella had too many pitfalls for my taste that discourage me from reading the next book in the series.

I have pretty mixed feelings about this one. It's built on an incredible idea, but the novella format isn't long enough to do it justice, and the execution is merely okay.

The setup is very strong. All of the Narnia and Alice in Wonderland type stories, those are all true and happened to different people in different worlds. (The nature of the worlds varies and can be extremely dark and not necessarily what you might think of as desirable, but they are all appealing to the personalities of the people who stumble into them.) But most people don't get to stay in their Wonderland, and they end up back in the “normal” world, wanting nothing more than to get back.

So what happens to you if you're a former Wonderlander and now you're back in this lame world, unable to return to the much better place in which you sojourned? Well, it's pretty hard to cope, and their families can't understand and think they've gone mad, so they get sent to, ostensibly, a school to help them get past their delusions. But actually all the students are former Wonderlanders, and the people who run it know they aren't delusional. A little over a third in, the story takes another, darker turn.

Neat premise, right? I absolutely love the kind of stories that make up the building blocks of this one – I loved Neverwhere, for example – and this was recommended to me on that basis. But it's not one of those stories, it's a meta-story about those stories. Unfortunately, there isn't all that much meat there past the premise.

The protagonist, Nancy, is a returnee from a world that just... doesn't offer much of interest to most people, I don't think. It's a bit difficult to relate to her in that way – why would she want to go back there so badly? But you can accept that she does and move on. Nancy's friends tend to be the other misfits, all of whom are a little too cool for school and a little too quick with the repartee. The ones who aren't Nancy's friends are pretty one-dimensional, because there's not enough time for any real character development. I think I can remember one of their names.

After the first third, the “main” plot begins, but it's over before it starts and there's never all that much mystery. You'll figure out a bunch of what's going on pretty quickly, and what you don't the characters will, and then you're at the climax, which goes awfully quickly and with minimal drama, and then you're at the end. The ending is rather too pat as well, and while I don't want to spoil anything, it's not well-supported by the text.

I debated between two and three stars, and for now I've settled on two, although I might change my mind and edit it back up later. If three stars is “I liked it” and two stars is “I didn't like it,” well, for once neither feels quite right. I liked the idea and I wish I liked the end result a bit more. But it's not bad, just... it's a pity it doesn't build more out of the building blocks it has. It's entertaining enough, but the wasted potential is a shame.

Pros: brilliant characters, great premise

Cons: underdeveloped, mystery's fairly easy to solve

Seventeen year old Nancy is starting at a new boarding school. But this isn't just any school, it's a school for kids who have found doorways to other worlds, kids who can't forget their experiences and adventures and who want to return to their real homes in those worlds. And one of them is willing to kill to find their doorway.

I loved the premise of this novella, that kids who went to other worlds (fairylands, underworlds, nonsense realms, etc.) would come back changed, and would want to return to those places. I also liked how their parents weren't too happy with the changes, and how society viewed their ‘odd' stories, assuming mental illness.

The characters were fantastic. What a fun bunch of misfits. You're told that a particular type of person finds these doorways, and that shows in how these youths act. They tend to be older than their years, speaking with a refreshing frankness. They're a diverse bunch with several sexualities and genders represented. Having an asexual protagonist was neat, as it's a perspective not generally used.

While interesting, the murder mystery is fairly easy to solve. And the shortness of the book meant that things wrapped up pretty quickly.

I really enjoyed this story. It was a fast read, and while I'd have loved for it to be a full length novel, the author made some great observations about humanity.