Style/writing: 4 stars
Themes: 4 stars
Characters: 4 stars
Plot: 3.5 stars
Worldbuilding: 4.5 stars

I honestly don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this series. I loved how self-aware this one was and the direction the meta plot is going in. 

I will read this series forever. Every entry continues to be wild and unique and riveting and I am glad this particular installment was a return to a group of already lover characters 

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

This is the one with dinosaurs! It's excellent, and if you've been enjoying the series so far you'll love this too. Antsy is trying to make it so no other kids get tricked out of their childhoods by unknowingly paying for too many doors, but this time she has some help from Kade, Sumi, and the others.

For a school where “No Quests” adorns the door, the students at the school for Wayward Children sure do get up to a lot of quests. A core group with a slowly shifting cast has been established as traveling to try and fix things on a semi-regular basis. In MISLAID IN PARTS HALF-KNOWN, some of the kids figure out that Antsy’s gift for finding lost things might let her find their doors... whereupon trouble ensues. Kade, Sumi, Cora, Emily, and Christopher travel with Antsy to try and set things right which were left broken when she fled the Store at the end of LOST IN THE MOMENT AND FOUND. The worldbuilding has been getting more complicated as they learn more about what's happening. Eleanor's assumptions about the students have started having more to do with her desire for Nonsense than their actual experiences, and it's getting to a point where it's affecting the room assignments. This continues several storylines which were begun earlier, creating what feels like an entirely new storyline through recombination of older threads, even though as each piece was something introduced earlier. This far into the series, that’s an excellent feeling, making the adventure feel both fresh and familiar even on a first read-through. A particular problem in the Store is both introduced and resolved, and several more tangles either arise or are addressed. As a story about nexuses and connections, it’s especially nice to reach a point where everything feels so connected to everything else that it’s a complicated tangle to explain the setup, which for me is one of the joys of a long-running series. 

MISLAID IN PARTS HALF-KNOWN could partly make sense to someone who starts here, but if such a person wanted to jump in midway without starting at the beginning of the series, LOST IN THE MOMENT AND FOUND (the previous book) would be a much better entry point. That reader would find themselves knowing as much as Antsy does about what’s happening, which is a comprehensible perspective even if it misses earlier portions of the ongoing story. I particularly enjoyed some moments with Kade and Sumi (both separately and together). This felt like an ensemble cast in a way that earlier books didn't, and it's wonderful to be at the point in the series where the focus can smoothly shift between characters as needed. 

This entry is great, don't miss it! This series is consistently excellent and I'm eager to read what happens next.