Where the Drowned Girls Go

Starred review from October 1, 2021

Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children serves as a sanctuary for children who have passed through portals to other worlds and can't cope with their old home upon return. Not every child fits there comfortably, however; stubborn Cora asks Eleanor to transfer her to the Whitethorn Institute, which is not warm or cuddly or particularly safe. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

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Starred review from October 11, 2021
McGuire’s outstanding seventh Wayward Children fantasy (following Across the Green Grass Fields) comes in darker than the previous novellas, tackling identity, body image, and trauma. Cora Miller has walked through magical doors, turned from modern girl to mermaid, been possessed by eldritch gods, and been spat out of her newfound home back to Earth all before the story begins. Exhausted and wanting nothing more than to forget her adventures, she eschews the comfort of Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, which caters to children who’ve gone on magical quests, for its rival, the Whitethorn Institute, which houses similar students, but encourages them to “believe that everything that happened on the other side of the door was just a dream, or a delusion.” As Cora’s sense of self crumbles under Whitethorn’s rules, the institute turns from school to prison, and Cora and her peers risk losing their identities—and their doorways home—forever. Throughout Cora’s harrowing adventures, McGuire’s sense of whimsy never falters. She delivers a plot dense enough for a full-length novel in her signature lyrical prose, exploring the effect of cruel, oppressive systems on children’s psyches, while keeping the series’ fairy tale tone intact. The result will captivate both longtime Wayward Children fans and new readers. Agent: Diana Fox, Fox Literary.

November 15, 2021
In the seventh Wayward Children tale, students plan to escape from a brutal institution designed to crush the magic out of them. Cora, a strong swimmer constantly tormented by her peers for her weight, went through an underwater door to the Trenches, a magical undersea world where she was a mermaid and a hero, valued for her bulk and her strength. But a whirlpool spat her out again into our world, leaving her bereft. Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children brought her among other young people who had traveled through a door and returned here, often unwillingly. Cora then passed through another door leading to the creepy world of the Moors, where the sinister Drowned Gods claimed her for their own. Even back at the school, Cora can't block out their voices or deny their marks on her skin, so she makes the desperate choice to switch to the Whitethorn Institute, which, rather than helping children while they wait for their doors to reappear, encourages them to reject their magical pasts and accept this world as home. Sadly, Cora almost immediately understands that Whitethorn's philosophy is less about giving its students the strength to move on with their lives and more about breaking their spirits and ruthlessly molding them into a miserable conformity. But dropping out isn't an option the school offers, and Cora and her friends realize that Whitethorn has more than mundane means at its disposal to keep them there. McGuire's themes--let people be themselves and don't treat being fat as some kind of moral failing or physical issue that's easily addressed--won't surprise readers of this series and her other works, but her usual arguments remain sound, and she tells a good story. There are also some deeply chilling moments in the experiences of the other students, particularly in the case of a girl cursed by the Rat King to shrink into a nameless rat. A journey into familiar territory with a skilled guide; but here's hoping that future trips head into the unknown.

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December 1, 2021
Cora is having nightmares. She can't relax the way she used to, even in water--something of a problem for a mermaid. In a desperate move to get away from the whispers of the drowned gods, she transfers from Eleanor West's familiar school to the much less friendly Whitethorn Institute, which requires regimented obedience and denial of anything outside this world. Cora has almost gotten used to those demands on the day Regan Lewis is supposed to graduate, but someone Cora thought she'd never see again shows up and starts making choices instead of going with the institutional flow. There is more going on at the Whitethorn Institute than the breaking of rebellious children, and it all unravels into a most interesting shape as Cora and her new classmates ask difficult questions, such as what happens to the people who graduate--and what happens to the people who don't. This volume highlights the horror of a world that requires you to deny what you know to be true because it doesn't quite fit, and it is a fantastic and tension-filled addition to the Wayward Children series.

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