My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the second book in the Wayward Children series, and the first that deals with the “before” stories of the children we met in “Every Heart a Doorway”. It deals with Jack and Jill, the twins at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Growing up, one of the twins was the dream daughter their mother always wanted. Always dressed like a princess, perfectly mannered, and exactly what a perfect daughter should be. The other was the adventurous, thrill-seeker their father wanted. Well, he would have preferred a son, but a daughter is what he got, so that’s what he worked with. When the twins were five, they learned that grownups can’t always be trusted. When they were twelve, they discovered the secret staircase that would change both their lives forever.
This was a fascinating story. Without spoiling the story (I hope!), things in Jack and Jill’s original world were not what they might seem from knowing them at Eleanor West’s. What the girls found at the bottom of that staircase, and how it changed them both, was both terrifying and wonderful.
Seanan McGuire has once again given me a book that made me want to devour it as fast as possible and linger over the tale a little longer. Part fairy tale and part coming of age story for these two girls, it turns some concepts of who and what it means to be a girl over to see what drops out. And what drops out is the realization that being a girl is up to the girl. Not the pretty dresses. Not the torn jeans and tomboy hair. Not the creepy master of the creepier house. And not the strange mad scientist with blood and bones. It’s the girl herself, and she has to find herself before she can know what being a girl means. The book is surprising in what we find out about Jack and Jill’s background (it’s not pretty), in who each of the girls started out to be, and what they each found in the strange world they found themselves in.
Absolutely recommended. It helps understand the changes in the twins if you have read “Every Heart a Doorway”, but it is not necessary. This one stands on its own quite well.
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My latest book is a collection of very short stories, half science fiction and half fantasy, called “Crossed Wires and Other Very Short Stories”. I have also written a few other short pieces, another collection, two novels, and an urban fantasy series. You can find most of them at Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and wherever e-books are sold. A few are also available from Amazon in paperback. My novel, “Circle Unbroken” is also on Kindle Unlimited, if that’s your reading preference. You can find out about all of them here.
There are also some stories you can read here on my site, mostly the yearly Halloween short I write, but there are a few others. You can read them from here
And So On... 