Where the Drowned Girls Go 📚 Spoiler Free Review

Title: Where the Drowned Girls Go
Author: Seanan McGuire
Series: Wayward Children
Genre: YA Fantasy
Publication Date: Jan 4th, 2022
Pages: 150
Publishers: Tor.com

This is my first review in over 2 months so go easy on me here!

Where the Drowned Girls Go is book 7 in the Wayward Children series and this one is the most similar to book 1. Every Heart a Doorway is set in Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children which is a place that children who have travelled through doors stay while hoping the world they truly belong to comes back for them. In Where the Drowned Girls Go we follow one of the students who after going through a traumatic experience doesn’t feel like they fit at the school. They decide to transfer to a sister school called the Whitethorn Institute which unlike Eleanor West’s it is for children that want to forget their experiences through the doors and go back to normal life. Everything is not all that it appears at this school though. Not as welcoming. Not as safe.

I love that we got to see some expansion on the world outside the doors. Learning more about what happens outside Eleanor’s Wests school & the doors was an interesting addition. Don’t get me wrong I love the uniqueness of the worlds behind the doors but it was interested seeing the other side of things.

I also enjoyed that this one dealt with some more ‘normal’ problems compared to trying to save the world or making sure you electrocute your girlfriend often enough so she can talk… This one dealt with trauma and how people can try and pretend it didn’t happen compared to actually dealing with it. Our MC is also fat, so we dealt with some fatphobia as well as internal fatphobia with the MC which I think was done quite well. Especially discussion on the idea that everyone who is fat is eating unhealthily and not being active as if that’s the only possible way someone can be fat. Which is extremely unrealistic… Some awesome discussion throughout on the topic.

As always Seanan McGuire has amazing writing with the ability to build worlds so vividly, even the more realistic ones… There was some amazing character development throughout for both our MC and the more side characters. I love McGuire’s ability to interlock all the stories in little ways as well. I enjoyed seeing old characters return like Sumi & Reagan!

Overall I highly recommend this series. Each book is around 200 pages or less. The audiobooks are awesome & they are fun, action packed & usually high stake books that keep you hooked from the very beginning!