4.5 stars

This was a wonderful addition to the series and honestly one I didn’t know I needed. It answers the question “Well what happens if someone doesn’t like the world they go to?”. The addition to the world felt like unlocking an area on a video game map and I loved it despite how dark it was. Fans of this series will absolutely love this novella and I highly recommend picking it up.

McGuire has done it again. Where the Drowned Girls Go is the 7th installment of The Wayward Children series and it holds all the magic of the first six books.

You see, there are magical doors that call children from this world to other lands, other realms, and other worlds. When they come back to this world, they aren't always believed nor is the magic of their world totally gone from them. Miss Wests home for these Wayward children is a place they can go to heal, feel welcomed, and know they are understood and loved. Yet sometimes, what seems like the end is only the beginning.....

For Cora, it is different. She has been through two magical doors in order to help rescue a friend and now that second world doesn't want to let her go. It haunts her days and her nightmares. In her distress, Cora leaves Miss Wests home and enrolls in the sister school Whitethorn Institute. But Whitethorn isn't what it seems and this time Cora may be the one who needs rescued....

I love everything about this series. From the beautiful representation of LGBTQIA+ character(s) to the fantastical adventures portrayed within the pages. There is a deep haunting humanity to these books that unfolds truths inside us that we only dare to realize are there.

This is easily my favourite in the series in what feels like a long long time. Since book one, really. And I couldn’t tell you what specifically about this seventh instalment did what the previous five couldn’t. I really have no idea.

Maybe it was finally having a story that featured this other school? The very anti-thesis of the Home for Wayward Children? Maybe it was Cora? Maybe it was all of it.

I’ll admit, I had forgotten most of what preceded this book which was a bit of a problem initially as so much depends on knowing what Cora experienced since returning from her Door. But it is more or less glossed over and hinted at, I just wish I had a better understanding. Regardless, though, the point is less what came before and what Cora wants of her future; mostly, to have one. Which brings her to ask for a transfer to Whitethorn. If only she really knew what she was asking for..

“<i>This place hurts people. It makes them crawl into their own hearts to be safe, and then turns those hearts against them</i>.”

Again, I really did love pretty much everything about this one. I’m even almost tempted to round up on it. I don’t imagine we’ll see a continuation of this particular plot/cliffhanger in book eight, as they seem to switch off, but I can’t wait to reunite with these characters and see how they might come back and save those still at Whitethorn. If they do.. who knows!

This has been a strange series for me. One I love in concept but not always in execution; and my relationship with this author, particularly under this penname, has been fraught with this kind of pattern. But it’s books like this one, it’s remembering she’s also Mira Grant, that keep me coming back and refusing to throw in the towel. And I’m so glad for that.

3.5 stars

Finally, a book that centers on Cora. Cora is by far my favorite of the Wayward Children, and I was so excited when I realized this book would focus on her. Unfortunately, we never get to see The Trenches behind Cora’s door. Instead, we’re taken to Whitehall Institute, which is basically an incredibly strict behavioral treatment center for kids with Doors.

I was super disappointed that we didn’t actually get to go through any doors in this installment, because those books are my favorite kinds. I loved visiting Sumi’s candy coated world of Confection, Lundy’s logical Goblin Market, and Regan’s green, grass fields of centaurs and other hooved creatures. While I really enjoy this series, books that take place more firmly in our world are never as immersive and exciting for me as the ones that invent an entirely new one.

That being said, I still really, really liked this book. I had all but forgotten there was another school. I think it might have been mentioned in the first book at some point. Even though it was mostly magic free, I really liked the development and introduction to some of the new characters at the school and the reintroduction of characters from past books (shout out to a returning Regan!). Cora, as usual, was my favorite, but Sumi is always a welcome addition.

As usual, this book is full of characters who represent those who are often underrepresented in fiction. Intersex and LGBTQ characters are the main characters of these novels. Best of all, queerness, body type, or gender are never the focus of the characters’ personality or quest. They are who they are fully and (mostly) happily. It’s also really refreshing to read about a character with a body type like mine who is the hero of the story. Cora is fat, but she’s also healthy and strong and brave. Maybe one day we’ll get to visit her underwater world. Until then, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for my own door that says “Be Sure”.

"In Where the Drowned Girls Go, the next addition to Seanan McGuire's beloved Wayward Children series, students at an anti-magical school rebel against the oppressive faculty.

"Welcome to the Whitethorn Institute. The first step is always admitting you need help, and you’ve already taken that step by requesting a transfer into our company."

There is another school for children who fall through doors and fall back out again.
It isn't as friendly as Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children.
And it isn't as safe.

When Eleanor West decided to open her school, her sanctuary, her "Home for Wayward Children," she knew from the beginning that there would be children she couldn’t save; when Cora decides she needs a different direction, a different fate, a different prophecy, Miss West reluctantly agrees to transfer her to the other school, where things are run very differently by Whitethorn, the Headmaster.

She will soon discover that not all doors are welcoming..."

Well, it's the first Tuesday of the year, and to meet her insane number of books published this year, like every year, Seanan McGuire has her first book out!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of this book for review.

Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan Mcguire follows Cora as she wrestles with the changes wrought by her trip to the Moors. Convinced that the only way to escape those changes and their consequences is to give up on ever going back to the Trenches and forget her adventures in other worlds, Cora decides that she must transfer to the other school for children who come back from impossible doors: the Whitethorn Institute. Once there, she finds a school steeped in misery and troubling clues that something sinister is happening beneath the surface. To uncover the truth and save herself and fellow students, Cora will have to overcome the fears that sent her to the Whitethorn Institute and find the inner hero that first brought her to the Trenches.

A single word of caution for readers: if you have not read previous books in the series, this is not a great place to jump in. While McGuire does a good job of providing the bare minimum context for things that happened to Cora in previous books, you would be missing out on 6 novellas-worth of world-building and context. And honestly, if you haven’t read the previous books, do yourself a favor and get on that because they’re excellent! Where the Drowned Girls Go focuses pretty exclusively on Cora. Although other returning characters make appearances, we don’t get the kind of perspective switches we saw in previous books. Even better for a book focused on a single character, we’re not going all the way back to the story of her first door (although this gets addressed). Instead, we get more development for the character as we know and love her from previous books. The resolution of this book also opens a whole new dimension of the ongoing plot, introducing a new villain and a new mission for our returning characters. This had the slight disadvantage of making the story feel too short because I wanted more information on this new aspect of the series, but overall I really enjoyed it and I can’t wait for the fans to start yelling about this book once they get their hands on it.

I’ve been meaning to come back to this series for quite some time. But one thing or another has always gotten in the way, so when I was approved to read/review this on NetGalley, I was hugely surprised and found time to squirrel this novella into my December reading.

The seventh novella in the Wayward Children series, this follows Cora. Since the events of Come Tumbling Down, Cora is struggling. She has nightmares from the Drowned Gods, who are waiting to claim her if she even finds her door. Desperate, she decided to transfer from Eleanor West’s Home from Wayward Children to Whitethorn Institute, another school to help children who fall through doors into other worlds then come back. This school teaches the students to forget, to be “normal” again. But the more time Cora stays, the more she realises that she and her fellow students aren’t safe…

Now, I know from several book bloggers and vloggers that I follow and trust that each book in the series can be very hit and miss, and I suspect that I have been very lucky to read and enjoyed three titles that most fans of the series really enjoy (Every Heart Is A Doorway, Beneath The Sugar Sky and In An Absent Dream). But going into this, I knew this instalment could very easily go either way.

I’m lucky to say that I did quite like this instalment, mainly because this instalment is set somewhere new. We spend most of this story at Whitethorn Institute, a school fans have heard of from Every Heart A Doorway, but not known much about. All readers knew was that it existed and it’s very different from Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Plus, it’s interesting how Cora’s view of the school changes from when she joins, desperate to forget the Drowned Gods and their hauntings, to a few weeks later when Cora realises that there’s something wrong with the school and she has to find her inner strength.

I do want to reference quickly that, like the other Wayward Children novellas, this has triggers. Bully, fatphobia, eating disorders and mentions of suicide as one’s character’s backstory.

I did like this, and I do like the series, but I recently reread my previous write-up of the books in this series, and I found that I had the same issues then as I do now. All these stories have potential but there’s not enough pages to flesh out the potential and, because of that, there are times when sections of the story felt skimmed or rushed. Each Wayward Children instalment I have read just needs a few more pages to help build the story more. I get that these stories are novellas (and to be honest, I think these stories work best as novellas because I can’t see how this series would work if each instalment is around 400-odd pages) so pages matter, but I feel that if we had a few more pages, the pacing on certain sections would be better.

I, also, want to point out that most novellas in this series can, in theory, be read as standalones. You get just enough information about the character’s previous adventures that you can happily read without backtracking. However, while I did happily read this as a standalone, I do think that maybe I need to backtrack and read the previous two instalments – Come Tumbling Down (the fifth in the series where we see the events happen to Cora [though the book mainly follows another character, Jack, and Cora’s friends) and Across The Green Grass Fields (which follows one of Cora’s new classmates as she discovers her door and how she became a student at Whitethorn).

I do like this series and I do like this instalment, but I get the feeling that this might be my last outing with this series. I yearn for more. More what, I’m not sure. Now, I know many of you guys love this series, and I urge you to keep reading it if this series makes you happy, but for me… I feel like I might be outstaying my welcome and should bow out gracefully. I might come back to this series to one more title… maybe, we shall see…

I'm a huge fan of this entire series, but Where the Drowned Girls Go is among the best installments! It really opens up the world in interesting ways, telling us about another school for wayward children, but not a good one. This primarily follows Cora and is a book about fatphobia (done beautifully) and about the power of names and knowing your identity. It ALSO ties back to the last installment in the series, which is cool. These are short so I don't want to say a lot but I absolutely loved this novella, certainly one of my favorites in the series. If you haven't picked these up yet I cannot recommend them enough! I received an advance copy of this book for review via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I'd like to start off this review with the fact that this is number SEVEN in this series. I've read SEVEN books in this series? Wow! Granted, these books are very short, and I read the first book in 2017, so it hasn't quite been seven years, but man, time flies.

This installment is similar to the first book in that it is setting up the subsequent books in the series. After 6 books following Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, it's time to introduce a counterpart to her home, one that teaches wayward children to deny their portal worlds and move on. While it's an interesting direction for the series, I wasn't a huge fan of this book overall. This is in part due to me thinking, from the title, that we would go to Cora's Mermaid/Siren/Ocean world, The Trenches. Though Cora had an event happen to her in a previous book that had her questioning her world, I was interested in exploring it, and maybe having Cora interact with it in a negative way. However, Cora does not go to her world, and instead goes to this other home to get away from her old world's influence. I just wasn't interested in the overall plot; it was not as whimsical as other books. It does incorporate some characters from the previous installments, and introduces characters who I'm sure we'll go explore next. But this book is mainly setting the stage for the direction of the rest of the books.

I do want to give some credit to Cora. She is probably the strongest and most developed character in the series. She has to deal with being bullied or judged due to her weight. Her perspective is one that is body positive. Cora's a good character to lead the way in showing the negative impacts of portal worlds on children; she'll overcome them.

This is one of my all-time favorite book series. This is the series that explains how I feel in this existence. "Where the Drowned Girls Go" is as good as the rest of the series. The end has me crying. There's not much more I can say without spoiling stuff.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor for an arc of this book.

In the 7th book of the Wayward Children Series, the Drowned Gods from the Moors still have their hooks in Cora. She can't sleep or even swim without hearing their whispers. She knows she has to do something to keep them from using her as a doorway back to the Trenches, so she transfers schools to the Whitethorn Institute: a place that teaches the children to forget their doors.

Oh my goodness I loved this so much! I loved getting to see more of Cora and really experiencing more from her point of view. She is such a great character and she goes through some amazing development in this book. I love how body positive she is even though she went through a lot to get here. I think this book deals with the fat rep really well and respectfully.

We also get to see more of Regan in this one, and I'm so happy for that! This book also has lots more Sumi, and some new and interesting characters I hope to read more about in the future. I love all the characters McGuire makes for this series and how beautiful and interesting and unique each one is. That doesn't change in this one!

I also love the writing style. This has been true for every one of the the 7 books in this series. It really hooks me and makes me want to just keep reading more and more. I cannot wait for another!

Keep an eye out for this book in January 2022

CW: fatphobia, suicide, suicidal ideation, bullying, emotional abuse

Another year and another fabulous Wayward Children novel. Cora is still suffering from her adventures in Come Tumbling Down. Her nightmares aren’t going away and she can hardly sleep. Against Eleanor West’s advice, she decides to transfer to Whitethorn Academy.

Whitethorn is almost the exact opposite of Eleanor West’s school. Here kids are forced to be the ordinary, conditioned to forget their doorways, and adhere to a strict schedule. But there is something sinister going on at the school and Cora soon wishes she had never made the decision to leave Ms. West and any chance of finding her doorway again.

This installment changes everything readers knew about this world and opens so many new doors (heh) to where this series can go. There are some unanswered questions, but it does leave off in a satisfying way. Cora is a wonderful narrator and I enjoyed getting to know some new characters while catching up on a few I’ve missed from earlier stories. There are some serious topics discussed, but this author handles them with extreme care as always.

I’m excited that there will be more books in this series to come.

This is definitely my favorite book in the series so far! I am absolutely loving the turn this series seems to be taking with this book and starts to give new meaning to the other books in the series as well.

There are so many new characters that are introduced, some more important than others. I’m definitely curious to see what happens with Callie and if she’ll appear in future installments. We also of course get to see a lot of Cora who this book centers on, but we also see quite a bit of Sumi as well! Regan from Across the Green Grass Fields also makes an appearance,

I think so far this has been the book that’s been the heaviest in terms of the topics it deals with including fatphobia, depression, suicide and just trauma in general but as always I think that Seanan handled everything beautifully and i really related to Cora a lot especially as someone who has gotten comments about my weight while growing up.

The Whitethorn Institute was such an interesting place but was also very unsettling as well, and I’m curious to see if the events from this book play into the next one, or if it’ll come back in later on in the series because some of the things mentioned in this book sounded like they’ll have pretty big repercussions for the world, the characters, and the doors themselves.

I definitely recommend reading these books in order at this point because they build off of each other so much, and things are really starting to come together! I’m definitely due for a read through from start to finish, and I’m thinking it’s about time that I get physical copies as well for my collection!

I love listening to this series, so this one did take me a bit of time to get into in the written format. I loved getting to see the side of the other school and am so excited for this series to continue with that aspect in mind. I did though feel like it was very much a "middle book" that was filler for more in the series. There was not a lot of resolution and so much was left open ended.
After reading Across the Green Grass Fields I wasn't sure where the story would go. It was fun to see Reagan weaved into the story. I did miss the "usual" characters and am hoping that this series continues for a long time!

Cada enero tenemos una cita con la nueva novela corta de la saga Wayward Children. En esta ocasión Seannan McGuire toma como protagonista a Cora, la sirena que salió mal parada en Come Tumbling Down. Desde aquella aventura, Cora no puede descansar porque no cesa de sentir la llamada de los Dioses Ahogados. En su regreso a la escuela de Eleanor West no consigue volver a la normalidad y decide tomar una decisión radical: abandonar la disciplina de la escuela y matricularse en el Instituto Whitethorn, que exhibe una filosofía opuesta a la que está acostumbrada y hace que sus estudiantes rompan todos los lazos que les puedan quedar con sus mundos de adopción.


Pero esta decisión puede no haber sido la más acertada que Cora ha tomado.

Tras unas entregas un tanto más flojas que las primeras de la serie, McGuire vuelve a tomarle el pulso a la historia con una narración que se centra mucho en el bullying y en general en las malas relaciones que muchas adolescentes sufren. Principalmente se refleja en Cora y como tratan su tamaño, pero el libro está plagado de ejemplos de maltrato. Es tan real que te recorren escalofríos conforme lo vas leyendo. Los peores monstruos son los más cercanos, así que a pesar de ser uno de los libros más realistas de la saga, no por ello deja de ser inquietante en su desarrollo.

El libro también se basa en la sororidad y cómo el compañerismo es lo que nos puede hacer fuertes frente a la adversidad. Tendremos apariciones de algunas protagonistas de entregas anteriores y nuevos miembros que se añadirán a la panoplia de personajes que está creando la autora estadounidense. Creo que en esta ocasión Seanan da un cambio de dirección al camino por el que se estaba encaminando la serie en su totalidad, y que la existencia del Instituto Whitethorn dará muchos quebraderos de cabeza en un futuro no muy lejano.

Y ahora nos queda todo un nuevo año de espera para ver por dónde sigue la historia.

I was afraid this series was going to start feeling stagnant, but nope, not yet. This one went in a direction I wasn’t expecting (went in without knowing anything except it would star Cora), and that direction was the perfect way to go. It brought a whole new aspect to the world, and opening up room for so many more stories. And, once again, I’m sad to be caught up because these stories are just so fun and delightful to read.

OK, I have to say that I really love the new direction of the overarching plot for the series. McGuire’s introduction of a alternate version of the Eleanor West's Home opens the world(s) up to explore even deeper themes then what’s been explored already. Although this book’s less whimsical than the others in the series, there’s still plenty of adventure and daring-do to be had. Plus I adored getting more of Cora’s story! This is book seven of the Wayward Children series and the series should be read in order.

Wow. This book was phenomenal. It sets up so many new plot threads to explore in the next books. I doubt this series is going to end anytime soon.
Cora is such an amazing character and I truly hope we get to see her origin story sometime in the future (although I really want to see Kade's too).
There are so many new and interesting characters in this book and the mysteries surrounding Whitethorn are so tangled and curious that I truly can't see where this is going.

As usual, McGuire is a master magician with words and worlds. They are amazing at building not worlds, but entire universes full of impossible worlds and adventures. I know this book isn't out yet, but I can't wait for the next one!

Date finished: 4/12/2021
Date published/released: 4th January 2022

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Thank you to Netgalley for approving this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was so excited for this one. It features Cora, the mermaid with plus size rep (introduced in Beneath The Sugar Sky). I really was hoping this book would be about Cora and the world inside her door. Instead, it follows Cora who is trying to forget about the drowned gods she meets in Come Tumbling Down (book 5). She does this by transferring from Eleanor West's School For Wayward Children to the Whitethorn Institute.

Despite this one not being in the world Cora goes to, it was still enjoyable. Well most of it anyway. I never liked the Whitethorn Institute from the beginning, and things there only got worse throughout the book.
I did however like how the characters banded together in their quest to learn more about the Whitethorn Institute. I also liked how it portrayed the characters not needing their world's or powers from said worlds to be everyday heroes.

I feel like matters surrounding Whitethorn are not yet over, and may arise in later books.

I love the Wayward Children series and was so excited to be able to read the latest installment. I really appreciate how different each adventure is and that the various combinations of characters are never predictable. I loved learning about the other school, a school for people who supposedly want to live regular lives following their adventures. Overall, an extremely strong addition to the series!