The nitty-gritty: A low-key entry into McGuire’s popular series, Across the Green Grass Fields introduces a new character and sets the stage for more adventures.

I’m always excited when a new Wayward Children book comes out, but unfortunately, this latest installment didn’t quite work for me. It wasn’t a bad book, per se, but it just didn’t have the emotional impact I’ve come to expect from this series. Regan is a new character, so this particular installment didn’t have that connection to the rest of the series that I’ve enjoyed in some of the previous books, which is probably another reason I didn’t like it as much. On the other hand, new readers could probably jump right into this book without worrying about the fact that it’s actually book #6 in the series.

This is the story of Regan Lewis, a horse-crazy, prepubescent girl and an only child who lives with her loving parents. Regan is lucky enough to be friends with Laurel Anderson and Heather Lewis, two of the most popular girls in school. But all that changes one day when Heather finds a garden snake and brings it to school to show Laurel. Laurel is horrified and declares snakes to be far out of the realm of what girls should be interested in, and she immediately ostracizes Heather from the group, insisting that she “doesn’t understand how to play like a girl.” Regan, wanting to stay inside Laurel’s magical circle of friends at all costs, stops talking to Heather as well, but she also wonders just what it means to be a girl and how she fits into Laurel’s narrow vision of girlhood. 

“Being a girl” becomes even more important when Regan realizes that all her friends are starting to go through puberty—changing bodies, starting their periods, etc—but Regan is not. She decides to ask her parents, and she’s shocked and dismayed when they reluctantly tell her that she is intersex. Regan is upset and confused and wants to confide in someone, and so she approaches the one girl who she thinks will understand, Laurel. Unfortunately, Laurel doesn’t understand and in fact dumps Regan immediately. Sad and angry, Regan stumbles off into the nearby woods, discovers an odd door, and decides to go through. But when she emerges, she finds herself in a different world, full of centaurs and unicorns and other magical, hoofed creatures. Regan finds the acceptance she craves among a family of centaurs, but someone in the Hooflands doesn’t want her there...

As she does in the other Wayward Children books, McGuire focuses on gender identity and staying true to yourself, and once again she tackles these themes really well. In fact, the first part of the book, before Regan goes through the door into the Hooflands, was my favorite part of the story. All Regan wants is to be like all the other girls in her class, but news of her intersex condition makes her question her identity. She knows deep down she is a girl, but it takes some soul searching and the loving support of her parents and the friends she makes in the Hooflands to feel good about herself. I believe this is the first intersex character in this series and I applaud McGuire for including Regan in her story.

The entire series is based on the idea of "home" and just what that means, and this book addresses that idea very well. All of the characters in the series have been through a magical door at some point in their lives, and they've also gone back through the door into the mundane world. McGuire explores the emotional impact of having to leave a beloved place, especially how that affects children, and we get to see Regan deals with this reality—although her experience isn't nearly as gut wrenching as some of the other characters' experiences.

But as far as the plot goes, I just wasn’t that invested in the Hooflands story, which is a shame because usually the parts that take place in the fantasy realms are my favorite. I’m also surprised because I was a horse-crazy kid myself, and I really expected to connect more with the horsey characters. Regan immediately makes friends with a centaur named Chicory, and they were cute together, I guess? I did love a couple of side characters named Gristle (a kelpie) and Zephyr (a peryton), and I wish they had been a bigger part of the story.

The time that Regan spends in the Hooflands is odd, too. Six years pass from the day she opens the door to her inevitable trip back home, and for such a short novella, conveying that passage of time felt a bit awkward. The main conflict revolves around the ruler of the Hooflands, Queen Kagami, who is apparently looking for Regan. But I never got the sense that anything truly important was at stake, and a weird twist involving the Queen at the end simply left me puzzled.

I think this story might have worked better for me if we’d met Regan earlier in the series. (And if I’m wrong about that and I just don’t remember Regan, please let me know!) I do like going back and learning the characters’ origin stories, but without even knowing Regan to begin with, Across the Green Grass Fields just didn’t have as big an impact on me.

The ending seems likely to lead into a future installment of the series, and I’m actually looking forward to seeing Regan interact with some of the other characters I’ve come to love.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

I absolutely LOVE The Wayward Children series. I reread this series every year and am constantly looking forward to the next one. I was a little apprehensive that this one didn't follow any of the previous characters, but excited none the less.

In this installment, we see Regan at different points throughout her childhood. We follow her navigating friendships and learning what it is to be a "real girl" according to the laws of elementary school girls. This means only liking things that fit into the box of "girl". Thinking outside of this box will get you shunned. At the age of 11, Regan starts to notice that she hasn't been developing the same as her other friends. She starts to question what is wrong with her, when her parents tell her that she is intersex; she has both X and Y chromosomes. She confides in her so called best friend, which does not go well. Regan ends up in the forest, where her adventure in the Hooflands begin!

Again, such a great book! Read it ASAP! I can't wait to get my hands on a physical copy to add to my series!

Thank you to Seanan McGuire, Toredotcom, and NetGAlley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I really love this series. I appreciate the authors attempt at representation in this book with the main character being intersex but it seemed it only went as far as the conflict at the first of the book and then the constant mentioning that she was flat chested and able to fit in small spaces. I just wanted it to dig a little deeper into how she was feeling. I love this series so much and I enjoyed this one a lot. Not my favorite but still loved. I'll be so sad when this series ends.

This book was amazing. It called to the little horse crazy girl that I was years ago. I am a Seanan McGuire fan for life and this book was another great addition to fairytale worlds that we’ve all dreamed of at least once.

Regan has started to notice that she may not be like girls her age. After confiding in the girl that she thought was her best friend, her friends turns on her. Hurt by this, Regan runs from school, through the woods, where she finds a doorway...

I did not know that this was a Wayward Children story until after I had started it but this book works well as a standalone. Very easy reading with a fabulously rich setting and heart, and a great found family.

I will definitely be picking up more Wayward Children books now.

This amazing series continues with a phenomenal new installment full of magic and whimsy. I love how this series has developed and grown - bring on the next installment!!

This book is the sixth installment of the Wayward Children series.

All the characters throughout the entire series are children (ages 6-11) who open doors to unique worlds that fit their needs and wants. I appreciate the author’s inclusion of different races and LGBTQI characters.

All of the books start out with a focus on the protagonist’s life before they go through the door. I am always excited to accompany them to their world, because I never know what to expect. I enjoy being carried away from this world and into the Alice in Wonderlandlish adventure.

Sometimes I am left wanting due to the length of these novellas. I wish I could explore even further into these wild fantastic lands.

Content warning: misgendering, intersex-phobia, kidnapping

We’ve had installments in the Wayward Children series for fans of Candyland, Frankenstein, and riddles. Finally, there is an entry for Horse Girls.

Regan struggles to understand friendship at that pivotal intersection of puberty and childhood. After she reveals to her “best friend” that she is intersex, Regan runs away and joins a commune of literal centaurs. There is a queen in the Hooflands, and she wants the human. But Regan will stop at nothing to maintain her agency and autonomy, despite whatever destiny wants her to believe.

Being a ten-year-old is rough. What I really appreciated about this work is the way it handled the pivotal conflict that drove Regan towards the door to the Hooflands. Laurel’s introduction establishes her as a mean girl who decides the world that revolves around her. So when she freaks out as Regan comes out to her, it’s perfectly telegraphed. Laurel was always an asshole, so of course, she was going to be rude as fuck about that too (this is a swearing review, apologies).

But then Regan goes to the Hooflands and every equine-human hybrid seems to be accepting of her. The roles they have are varied, and it makes sense that Regan is drawn to them. She also happens to love horses and the impossible. Even when some of the other creatures come after her to bring her to the queen, there is still this focus that everyone has a role, everyone has a voice, and no one person should set the rules for everyone. It’s beautifully done, especially with the looming, startling note this novella starts off with.

A novella in which our portal child gets everything she wanted and more.

For those unfamiliar with Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series, a little background: the students at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children have all been through their own portals to strange fantasy realms and have returned to the world of their birth changed and unable to fit back into “normal” society. The books in the series alternate between “present day” adventures set at (or at least, starting at) the school and stand-alone portal fantasies. This latest volume is a portal fantasy installment (as are all the even numbered titles) and as such can be read independently of the rest of the series. Across the Green Grass Fields has been described as an excellent “jumping on” place for new readers, because unlike the previous portal fantasy installments (Down Among the Sticks and Bones and In an Absent Dream) this book introduces a whole new character not yet seen in the “present day” installments (Every Heart a Doorway; Beneath the Sugar Sky; Come Tumbling Down). Across the Green Grass Fields gives readers new to the series a chance to get a feel for what McGuire is doing without having to worry about how the events connect to characters and settings we’ve already met.
The setting for this installment is the Hooflands, a fantasy world full of every equine and part-equine creature from legend and mythology, whether terrestrial, arboreal, or aquatic: centaurs, unicorns, satyrs, minotaurs, perytons, kelpies, and more. If it has hooves, it exists in the Hooflands – except for the mundane horses, donkeys, cows, and goats we know. Long time fans of Seanan McGuire were not surprised that she created a fantasy world based around magical horses, given her life-long love of My Little Pony, but the Hooflands are no simple MLP pastiche. McGuire has filled this world with all the hierarchies, prejudices, misunderstandings and unfairnesses that exist in our non-magical, non-fantasy human world. These issues are not evident when Regan first arrives in the Hooflands but reveal themselves slowly first through conversations and asides and then through Regan’s encounters with the species she’s been told are dangerous. I loved the way this portal world mirrors our own in a more direct way than the other worlds we’ve encountered so far. Those other portal worlds have been populated with creatures more human in appearance, but the denizens of the Hooflands are more like us in emotion and action. In some ways, the society of the Hooflands might the most fully explained of the portal worlds we’ve visited. (This in no way means I don’t want Seanan to revisit the Hooflands in future volumes – there’s still plenty of world to explore, especially regarding what may have happened after the end of this book.)
The cast of the Wayward Children books is one of the most diverse you’re likely to find anywhere, because McGuire knows how much representation matters. For LGBTQ kids and non-white kids, seeing themselves having the types of adventures usually populated with straight white kids (looking at you, Pevensies, Gales, Darlings, and you lot) is empowering. Our new addition to the cast, Regan, gives another marginalized population a chance at the spotlight: intersex kids. Regan’s journey to the Hooflands starts when she begins questioning her parents about why she’s not growing and hitting puberty at the same rate as her female classmates. Being a girl, being the “right kind” of girl to stay in her best friend’s good graces, has been important to Regan for as long as she can remember. Finding out she is intersex is hard, even with parents who have been prepared to have this conversation for a long time and know exactly what they think they should say. But the reaction of the best friend sets her directly on the path through the door to the Hooflands, and thus puts Regan’s sense of self at the center of the story. That scene is not easy for anyone with a shred of compassion to read; it had me in angry/upset tears that made me put the book down to regain composure. But it’s also a necessary scene. Because kids can be cruel to anyone who is even slightly different, and because it sets Regan not only on the physical path to the Hooflands but also on the emotional path to being more empathic when she encounters others who are mistreated because they are perceived to be different. And that makes all the difference in the way the story plays out.
Some portal stories are simple adventures, and some come with the burden of Destiny (or, at least, Perceived Destiny). The Hooflands has traditions about what it means for a Human to arrive and what is expected of them. McGuire dissects and re-stitches the “destined one” trope beautifully, looking at it not just from Regan’s point-of-view but also from her adopted centaur family and some of the other species as well. I really, really don’t want to spoil the best part of this subversion, but I have to say that it was both unexpected and inevitable and I may have gasped out loud when the big reveal happened.
I am looking forward to learning how Regan arrives at Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children, and what effect she will have on the kids we’ve come to know and care about from previous installments. And like all the kids at the school, I find myself hoping that somehow, Regan’s door to the Hooflands will open for her again someday. Because we all deserve to live where we’re happiest and where we can be our authentic selves.

Seanan McGuire has done it again. The Wayward Children series has been consistently amazing, and Across the Green Grass Fields is no exception. One year ago tomorrow, I posted a review for Come Tumbling Down, and I can't believe that much time has passed since the last time I had a new book in this series.

The Wayward Children books, as you may know by now, are a series of novellas about young children who wander from our world through a magical door into another world. Eventually, once their adventures have come to an end, they make their way back into our world. Many of them are unable to cope with this, and end up at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, a boarding school for those who have left and come back, and await the return of the magical door that will take them home once more. In this series, the odd-numbered books are set mostly at Eleanor's school, and follow the adventures of the children waiting for their doors to come back. The even-numbered books tell the stories of children beyond our world. Across the Green Grass Fields is book #6, and serves as a solid standalone novella within the series, an excellent starting point for new readers, as our young protagonist, Regan, has not yet made her way to Eleanor's school.

But it all starts at school.

Regan, you see, loves horses more than anything. Her best friend Laurel, however, does not tolerate the presence of anything that she deems "un-girly." This means ostracizing another former friend for daring to bring a snake to school, and shunning anyone who dares to trample upon her ideals. Luckily, Laurel doesn't seem to take umbrage with Regan's love of horses. As the girls grow older Regan learns from her parents that she is intersex, and therefore won't be undergoing puberty in the same way as the other members of Laurel's group. Trying to make sense of it all, Regan tells Laurel what she was told by her parents. Laurel doesn't understand, mistakenly believing that Regan was a boy, and was lying about being a girl. Regan, now scared of the one school friend she thought she could trust, flees the school and begins to head toward home.

She won't be seen by another human for six years.

In her stumbling journey to her parents' house, Regan encounters her door, the words "Be Sure" written above it. Upon entry, she finds herself in the Hooflands, home of unicorns, centaurs, kelpies, and more mythical hooved creatures. Adopted by a small herd of centaurs, Regan learns that it is a human's destiny to come to the Hooflands at a time of great change. What that destiny may entail is a little fuzzy, but she will need to eventually be taken to see the Queen.

But Regan isn't ready for destiny. Not yet. She needs to take her time, finding herself before she's ready to change the world.

Y'all, I can't accurately express how much I love this series. Across the Green Grass Fields is another strong entry, bringing fabulous new characters into the world via a magical door we hadn't yet encountered. It's out in stores today. Please go grab a copy and find out for yourself.

It's time to return to the Wayward Children series in this standalone tale of Regan, an intersex girl who finds herself in a land of centaurs and unicorns. The only thing missing is the school that plays such a large role in the series.

While the writing is still strong, with relationships at the forefront of the tale, the lack of any real connection to previous novels hurts this one. There's nothing wrong with stepping away from the characters in previous stories, although it's sure to leave some fans disappointed, but if it doesn't lead back to the school as some sort of new starting point with a new cast then what's the point?

Now there's no way to definitively tell that this won't be happening in the future, but it's not really happening here which seems like a mistake. The talented writing of McGuire is the saving grace here. While I have little interest in horses, unicorns, or odd mythological beasts, I can't help but be drawn into the relationships and character growth that occurs. It does feel a little bit like the moral of the story isn't given quite enough power, but it does manage to be an interesting tale. Unfortunately, this all winds up being my least favourite of the series.

I don't think words can adequately express just how much I love Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children books - they're so loving and wholesome and inclusive. They're each their own little ode to the "weird kids" who found solace in other worlds. Across the Green Grass Fields may be a standalone, but it's a Wayward Children book through-and-through. Seriously, I loved this book so, so, so much, you guys. So much of Regan's struggle to force herself into the narrow confines of what is considered "normal" was exactly what I went through as a girl with autism. Heather's exclusion for not fitting into that standard of "normal" happened to me over and over and over again as a child (and as a grown-ass adult). I would love it if I were to go through a door and end up in a world where I was the only human and there wasn't anyone to tell me what normal was.

In short, Seanan McGuire is a wizard and I bow to her superior writing ability. How does she manage to fit so much story into such a short book? HOW?!?

A new Wayward Children book by Seanan McGuire is always a highlight of the year for me. I’m still so very much in love with the concept of this series: of being unhappy in the real world but finding your door to a place where you can truly be yourself.

That being said, the odd-numbered books were always my favorites. While I enjoy the standalone stories, the even-numbered books, the ones taking you to different lands through doors that were found, a lot too, the stories set at the school / featuring more than one character always worked better for me. So I wasn’t really expecting Across the Green Grass Fields to become my new favorite of the series (I’m not sure anything can ever top Come Tumbling Down tbh) but I was still a little disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong, Across the Green Grass Fields is a great book that I enjoyed a lot! It just wasn’t quite for me. This series almost always featuring minority / queer main characters, the sixth book is no exception: Regan is intersex. As this is a series of finding doors to another world because the real world didn’t treat you well, it comes as expected, Regan experiences intersex-phobia from people she trusts. Mild spoiler: I was really glad that it wasn’t the parents and that they instead informed and helped Regan in every way possible, just being kind, awesome and full of love, so much though, that it almost made me question if Regan really needs her door.
Something that hits me just as hard though: shitty friends! This novella comes at you with a good dose of sadness real fast, which is as should be expected and yet I’m never prepared for it.

As to why I didn’t enjoy Across the Green Grass Fields as much: It’s just Regan’s world behind that door that wasn’t for me. I am not and never have been even remotely interested in / fascinated by horses while Regan is very much so, and so her world is built upon that love for horses, hence me not enjoying it as much. It still featured a set of very precious characters and a lovely story, but overall it just didn’t quite get to me as previous ones did.

I’m sad to say that Across the Green Grass Fields is my least favorite (yet still liked!) book in the series so far. While I loved the characters, and the message this particular story comes with, it just wasn’t a world for me.

"A young girl discovers a portal to a land filled with centaurs and unicorns in Seanan McGuire's Across the Green Grass Fields, a standalone tale in the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Wayward Children series.

“Welcome to the Hooflands. We’re happy to have you, even if you being here means something’s coming.”

Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated, of late.

When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to "Be Sure" before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies, and other magical equines - a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes.

But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem...

A standalone Wayward Children story containing all-new characters, and a great jumping-on point for new readers."

A great "jumping-on point" but if you are smart enough to subscribe to the Tor newsletter around Thanksgiving they gave free copies of all the previous volumes for your e-reader!

I may have a new favorite in the Wayward Children series! As most of these books, it did have a bittersweet ending. I loved Regan and the Hooflands. (nah, Lundy is still my favorite)
As a typical little girl I loved horses and unicorns. As a teenager, I rode and showed horses. This book brought me back to my childhood. Of all the worlds in this series, the Hooflands is where I would like to go.
These books are short. I wish they were much longer. What this installment is a little lacking in is a bit more character development and world building. While I loved this book, it felt a little rushed; I mean, the quest was only about a chapter long. Though that may be exactly the point of the book, with its take on destiny and heroes. I really want to know more about the culture of the creatures in this world. There is so much more to explore here.
I hope Regan shows up at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children and we get to go back to the Hooflands. I really want that door to reopen..

Seanan McGuire has done it again, I discovered her first book in the series a couple of years ago and each of hers that I pick up, I cannot put down. Seanan paints such a magical world that I can't help but get fully absorbed in. The main characters are always so endearing and sweet and the author handles each of their challenges in such a way my hear aches for them and I cheer them on in their journey. I'm always a little conflicted when the door closes on another story, but hopeful the next will be just as charming.

Highlights
~A friend who won’t let you pet snakes is no friend at all
~Unicorns are Very Beautiful, Very Dumb, and Very Tasty
~Centaurs are a girl’s best friend
~Thumbs are a superpower
~Santa cannot leave candy in horseshoes
~We could have avoided all of this if you’d just given your kid a day off from school

That’s it, pack it up, everyone else can go home. Seanan just won 2021, and we haven’t even gotten past January. Talk about setting the bar high for the rest of the year!

(…There’s a dressage joke in their somewhere, but I don’t know enough about horses to put it together. Ah, well. Pretend I did!)

Across the Green Grass Fields is equally welcoming to long-time readers of the series, and those who have never picked up a Waryward Children book before; it stands alone perfectly. And as ever, it’s incredible how much awesomeness McGuire managed to pack into so few pages.

‘Children are people, actually’ and ‘there’s no one way to be a girl’ are both big themes in McGuire’s books, and Across the Green Grass Fields incorporates both. At the beginning of the book, poor Regan has spent most of her ten years of life squeezed into the tiny box of her ‘best friend’s’ ideas about what a girl should and should not be – and do, and like. (Insert some wryly hilarious commentary on how Regan’s love of horses is considered perfectly acceptable for a girl…despite how big, smelly, and potentially dangerous they can be. It’s the kind of thing McGuire does so well; neatly highlighting the paradoxes in our societal programming and holding them under a microscope for us to take a good long look at.) When Regan discovers that she’s intersex, the box finally shatters, and she runs away – and ends up in the Hooflands, a world populated not just by centaurs and unicorns, but hippogryphs and perytons and kelpies too; every magical creature you can think of and plenty you can’t, so long as it has hooves! Here, humans are harbingers of disaster, but despite that, Regan is welcomed, loved, and functionally adopted by the centaur herd who find her.

All the Wayward Children books are about finding your true home; that’s what the Doors do (but possibly not what they’re for. We may never know what they’re for, and I’m okay with that). But it’s not just Regan’s love of horses that makes the Hooflands home for her; in being the only human in that world, no one thinks she’s strange for getting taller but not curvier – it seems like she won’t go through puberty without hormone treatments, but that’s okay, and it’s okay in a way it might not have been if she’d stayed in our world. In the Hooflands, there’s no one to compare herself to and be found lacking; there are no societal beauty standards, no peer pressure, no labels. No confusing Wikipedia articles! She’s just…human.

And there’s no wrong way to be that.

We don’t know a lot of specific details about the journeys of most of the series’ characters through their own Doors; how old they were when they went, how long they stayed. Regan finds the Hooflands when she’s ten, which is alarmingly young considering that she’s supposed to save it from something terrible. But she doesn’t have to save the world at ten. It’s okay. She gets to just be.

For a while.

The Hooflands is pretty idyllic for Regan, but it’s never that simple with McGuire. There are all kinds of prejudices among the different species, and even the creatures Regan is told are mindless monsters…maybe aren’t, actually. And that’s a hard thing to wrap your head around as an adult, but it’s hard for kids, too; learning that even the people you love, who love you, aren’t perfect. It’s hard not to compare Regan’s human parents with her centaur family: both love her dearly just as she is, and support her the best way they know how, but they’re still flawed. They make mistakes. They don’t always understand. The truths they tell her are perhaps not the only truths, or not true at all.

It doesn’t make them less loving. It’s just that they’re mortal, and therefore imperfect. That’s a hard moment, when you realise that as a kid, but McGuire has never pretended that being a child is easy, and never flinched away from portraying those hard moments, reminding us of them. Children are people too, and those of us who aren’t children anymore really need to remember that. Too many of us forget.

Another thing we should remember: It’s the ones Regan’s been taught are monsters who turn out to be people. And it’s the ones who are supposed to be people who are, in the end, the very worst of the monsters.

The worldbuilding is a delight; I will never stop being impressed with the sheer diversity of the magical creatures in McGuire’s books. Most people know what a centaur is, I think; far fewer will recognise the Hoofland’s perytons. We even get a creature I’d never heard of before! I’m a hardcore folklore fan, okay; I do not encounter magical creatures I don’t know very often – unless an author has created their own, obviously. So it delights me when I get to discover a new one! I use this to illustrate just how well McGuire knows her myths, that she can draw on so many, but she passes all of it through her own filter of awesome and creates so much that is wholly and uniquely her own. The Hooflands is purely her own creation, and it’s a marvelous one; I especially loved the details of centaur courtship, and finally getting an answer on how baby centaurs work! All the delights, though, are woven through with McGuire’s signature wry, half-dark humour; unicorns aren’t very magical in the Hooflands…but they sure are delicious when barbecued! And that’s just so hilariously-horrifyingly typical of McGuire’s spin on the fantastical.

Equally typical is what Across the Green Grass Fields has to say about chosen ones, and how they’re made – but that’s something you really need to read about for yourselves.

Tl;dr: another beautiful, brutal, and powerful instalment in a series that really ought to be mandatory reading by now. It’s out tomorrow, and you really mustn’t miss it!

After giving this some thought, I think I was only rating this book 3 stars because I had loved the early books in this series and was reluctant to believe I'm just not enjoying them anymore. Truth is, the last two have been really disappointing.

Across the Green Grass Fields was actually quite boring for me. Unlike with the characters in the earlier books, I never felt any strong emotional ties to anyone, and I found the fantasy story here-- centaurs, unicorns etc. -- dry and uninteresting. I did not personally have a horse phase so I think some of the equestrian love was lost on me.

Perhaps I'm just tired of this concept after reading six books circling a similar theme. And, don't get me wrong, that theme is one that's very close to my heart: that there's no right way to be a girl. That's what's at the heart of all these books and it is a much-needed message, but I'm at the point in this series now where I'm getting deja vu. I feel like I'm reading about the same things and the same characters with names and certain details changed.

I will wait and see what the reviews say for Where the Drowned Girls Go, but I'm just not the type of reader who keeps coming back for exactly the same thing over and over again. I hope McGuire does something exciting and fresh with the next book.

I have read the first three books in the Wayward Children series and I completely adored them! Obviously I was exited to get to Across the Green Grass Fields. Yes, I haven’t yet read the fourth or fifth book in this series but it didn’t matter as this story can stand on it’s own. (Though I do need to get around to the other books soon.)

Seanan McGuire’s writing in the Wayward Children series is gorgeous. I always end up pulled into it from a few sentences. I’m not great when it comes to describing writing styles, all I can say that I love the way McGuire writes and I need to read more books by them. An interesting aspect of this series is the fact that the worlds change with each book, which makes exploring these stories all the more fun. The world in Across the Green Grass Fields was very interesting, I adored how everything was “horse themed”. I was intrigued by all the different beings in this world and I wanted to learn more about everything.

Another interesting aspect of this novella is the fact that we get to see Regan, the main character, from when she was ten to sixteen (if I’m not mistaken with the numbers). It was amazing getting to see Regan’s thoughts and personality throughout the years, especially since she spends all that time in a fantasy setting. Regan’s new adopted family was interesting as well, I enjoyed learning more about them and their relationships with each other and the world that they inhabit. There were two characters that were introduced towards the end of the story that I was curious about, but we didn’t get all that much from them. Which is to be expected from such a short book.

The story was an interesting one. In some ways it felt like a quiet one, since a lot of it is focused on Regan growing up and learning about the new world. Not saying that nothing exiting happens, far from it. This story just felt like it didn’t have the highest stakes, which isn’t a negative it’s actually something I really enjoyed about it. The ending did leave me a bit unsatisfied. I just wanted a little more from it, I wish that McGuire wrote one more chapter for this story. Other than that I really have no complains about this story.

Overall, Across the Green Grass Fields was a fantastic book. The world is fantastic, the characters interesting and the writing gorgeous. What more could I ask for? Obviously I recommend this book to everyone. I’m so glad that this was the first book that I read in 2021.

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire
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Seanan McGuire is back with another installment in the Wayward Children series. In this stand alone novella, Regan discovers a doorway leading to the Hooflands after facing a devastating betrayal by her best friend. In a world inhabited by centaurs and unicorns, Regan’s appearance can only mean that something big is going to happen as humans are seen as true heroes and must begin their heroic journey immediately. But as time goes on, Regan convinces her new centaur family that she isn’t a hero, merely a young girl who wants to be accepted for who she is and to find a place where she truly belongs.
This novella truly can be read without any knowledge of the previous installments in the series, though all of the books are definitely worth reading. Like the other books in this series, McGuire takes great care to create relationships between characters that are loving, kind, and accepting. Regan learns from her parents that she is intersex after an emotional discussion about her lack of physical development as compared to her friends. Her parents are incredibly honest and supportive in answering Regan’s questions and remind her repeatedly that she is perfect as she is. In the Hooflands, Regan learns that unicorns are silly creatures that need constant attention from their farmers, the centaurs and this information is a delight to watch unfold. The world building is incredibly well done and I loved the support and love found among the cast of characters.
Perfect for young adult fantasy readers, this is a wonderful invitation to pick up this amazing series. Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own.