Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire is the seventh book in the Wayward Children series.
In this book, we return to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children. Ever since our friends helped Jack on the Moors, everything has not been right with Cora. The Drowned Gods are in her head and even coming back through the doors haven't helped keep them at bay.
But all hope may not be lost... depending on how you look at it. There is another school for lost children, one where things are run very differently from Ms. West's. Desperate to distance herself from the Gods that haunt her, Eleanor reluctantly agrees to Cora's transfer to the Whitethorn Institute, though, the evil you know may just be better than the evil you don't. Guess Cora will just have to figure out which evil she is able to fight.
After not being overly impressed with McGuire's last book, I was happy to return to a world of familiar characters and get more information about the other school that has only been alluded to in the past.
My only real comment about this one is a slight disconnect in the pace of the story. It started a little slow for me. Not a whole lot happened and then suddenly, action, action, action and then it was over. The rest of McGuire's books have this quest-like feel to them and although, there is a little of that in Where the Drowned Girls Go, I did feel like a bit of that was missing.
I did like Cora's transformation, more like realization, by the end of the book. I liked how she knew she both was and wasn't a hero. And any book where Sumi comes in to play is just plain fun.
I am such a fan of these short, magical books about doorways, candy lands and dark seas. But it does feel like we are reaching that inevitable conclusion to the series. There is this sense of an ending coming and it'll be interesting to what that ending may be.
I'm in it for the long haul. This one gets 3.5 stars from me.
That's all for now!
-M-