“For us the places we went were home. We didn't care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn't have to pretend to be something we weren't, We just got to be. That made all the difference in the world”

We hear stories of children travelling to new worlds, having fantastic adventures, but always in the end Alice came back from Wonderland, Lucy came back through the Wardrobe, and Wendy flew through her window back to her nursery. But what happens to these children that come back? They are changed, trying to adjust to their old world, a world that does not accept them as well as the stories they bring back with them.

And so, for these lost souls, there is Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. For those children who cannot adjust into the world they are in, where desperate parents send them away to “cure” them of their delusions. In actuality, it is a chance to be around others who know what it's like to be away from the place they consider as home and to heal and adjust in their own time. But not all is as it seems, and when students begin to die in violent ways, the students left behind must find a way to survive, to discover who among them is to blame, and who is next to die. 


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I absolutely loved this book. It was short, which often makes it harder for me to feel anything towards the characters due to the short amount of time there is for character development, but McGuire did a fantastic job of bringing these characters to life. Nancy, Kade, Jack and Jill, Sumi, and Chris were all diverse, interesting and complex characters with different motivations, issues, and morals. The complexities of their situations, being ripped away from their homes not once but twice, and how that trauma affects people differently is a really cool concept that was explored in this world and I hope that the rest of the books continue to address that subject. 

The only reason this isn't a 5 star book for me is that I found some parts of the writing to be a bit jarring. Most of the time it was lovely, all flowing together and being in a cohesive tone, but there were a few sections where conversations were happening that just seemed choppy or out of place. Things being said for the sake of being said as opposed to flowing into the story in a more natural way which I would have preferred. Those sections took me out of the story a bit but not enough to make me dislike the book. Overall I loved it! There were moments where I had to just sit the book down and contemplate the quote I had just read due to how moving and raw it was. It was a fantastic read with good LGBTQ+ representation as well and I can't wait to pick up the rest of the series.