Where the Drowned Girls Go (Wayward Children #7) by Seanan McGuire

Wayward Children series
Every Heart a Doorway
Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Beneath the Sugar Sky
Come Tumbling Down
Across the Green Grass Fields

In an Absent Dream

Once again, I listened to this as an audiobook, but unlike other books, this one was narrated by Whitney Johnson, not the author.  

In this book, we return to Cora the Mermaid who is haunted by dreams after her excursion in the Moors in Come Tumbling Down. So she asks to be transferred from Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children to a different school called Whitethorn, a school where the headmaster has a very different theory than Eleanor West on how to handle children who have come back from doors. Here we see Regan from the previous book and hear all kinds of ways parents mess up their kids.

I was really excited to be in a different school and it was really fun to read about different pedagogical differences. The thing is, the YAness of it all was challenging for me. The villain was too villainous. I think there it's important to recognize that Eleanor West's teaching style isn't for everyone and that's okay. There should be a place for kids to go who need something different. They should be villainized. 

But it's such a unique world and McGuire writes such interesting, diverse characters that I can't stop reading. The next two books in the series have great Goodreads reviews, so I guess I'll be reading on, even though it's not really the perfect series for me. Unfortunately, my library doesn't have the audiobook, so I put a hold on it as an ebook and we'll see how long that takes.  

3/5 stars

Lines of note:

"Heroism is addictive. Maybe that's why it sounds so much like heroin." (timestamp 2:16:21)

I laughed very hard at this line.

"I don't kill innocent people. That's not what a hero does. but I don't stand back and let people endanger my friends. That's not what a hero does, either." (timestamp 3:50:38)

I feel like it doesn't take a hero to try and protect your friends, though. Right?  That's just standard good-person fare?

Hat mentions:

None!