TITLE: Where the Drowned Girls Go (Wayward Children Book 7)
AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire
160 pages, TorDotCom, ISBN 9781250213624 (hardcover, also in e-book and audio)
DESCRIPTION: (from the Goodreads page): 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 Whitehorn, the Headmaster.
She will soon discover that not all doors are welcoming...
MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5.
MY THOUGHTS: Seanan McGuire’s “Wayward Children” series has settled into a comfortable rhythm: the odd numbered books are set in the present and usually involve several students going on a quest, while the even numbered books show us someone’s portal adventure – usually a character we’re already familiar with. In Book 6, Across the Green Grass Fields, McGuire veered from expectations by giving us the portal story of a brand-new character with no ties to the “present day” volumes. She continues to break expectations in Book 7, Where the Drowned Girls Go (releasing tomorrow, January 4, 2022), by having a student we’ve come to love decide that Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children is no longer a place she wishes to be and requesting transfer to the other boarding school we’ve heard mention of. Cora’s had enough of quests, enough of trauma, enough of other beings trying to gain control over her life. It’s not a spoiler to say that despite Eleanor’s most persuasive arguments, the transfer goes through; the book isn’t focused on whether Cora will leave but rather what happens when she does.
I don’t think it’s out of line to call this Seanan’s “gothic romance without the romance” installment of the series, as opposed to the gothic horror of Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Come Tumbling Down. I love the Moors. I want an entire series set in the Moors. I don’t honestly think we’ve seen the last of the Moors. But this is not that kind of gothic story. No vampires, no revenants, no deep-dwelling elder gods (the last of which is exactly what Cora is trying to escape being controlled by). What this story has is a mansion walled off from all surrounding civilization, with dark drafty halls and stern unsmiling adult caretakers and rooms students aren’t allowed to visit and a headmaster with a secret; it has a scared and unhappy girl who thinks she has nowhere else to turn falling under the sway of someone who turns out to be at least as controlling as what she’s running away from and who must find her way out before things go from bad to worse. (And this is a Seanan McGuire book, so you know things are going to get worse before they get better.) I loved all the gothic tropes McGuire incorporates and occasionally upends. The Whitehorn Institute has an embedded, palpable sense of menace. I don’t know that I would describe Eleanor West’s Home as particularly joyous (the students are mostly happy, yes, many seem as content as kids waiting for a portal to reopen to the place the truly feel at home can be, but joyous? No.), but it looks like a constant carnival compared to the Whitehorn Institute. So dour and grey a place must haunt us going forward, and I have no doubt that we haven’t seen the last of the place or of its staff, remaining students, and headmaster.
The wonderful thing about the “Wayward Children” series is that the installments really can be read in any order. Each installment includes whatever information a reader might need to “catch up” on previous volumes without having everything about those previous volumes spoiled. In Drowned Girls, we are reminded of (or introduced to) the bits of Come Tumbling Down and Beneath the Sugar Sky that are pertinent to Cora’s present journey, and they are enough to refresh ongoing readers’ memories and hopefully intrigue new readers.
And this is Cora’s journey we’re on. Mood and classic tropes can only take us so far if we don’t care about the character we’re following into the place. And we do care about Cora. Even if you haven’t read any of the previous books she’s appeared in, you’ll care about her within the first few pages. You’ll recognize her fear that the home she loves is out of her reach, that she’s stuck in a world that doesn’t understand her, that she’s drawn the attention of otherworldly beings who might, through her, find a way to lay waste to the home she loves. (Okay, yeah, most of us don’t encounter that last one – but many of us do encounter thoughts in our own heads that feel otherworldly and controlling and that we’d do anything to escape from. Has McGuire given us ocean-dwelling elder gods as a metaphor for mental illness? I think maybe she has.) You will recognize her need to do something, anything, to change her situation because her situation has become unhealthy and untenable. And you will recognize all the doubts that come along with the thing she does, and the steps she takes to make things as right as she can.
Cora is not the only familiar character appearing in Where the Drowned Girls Go. But telling you who else shows up and what roles they end up playing is a level of spoiler to which I will not descend. Because of when I’m posting this, it’s likely the book is already available in e-format wherever you are, with the print edition easily orderable. So get to it. You won’t be disappointed if you like gothic tales, boarding school tales, tales with magic and danger and in which portals are not the only way to find adventure.
NOTE: I did receive an e-ARC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.