McGuire deftly handles her myriad concepts within a small space, and it’s beyond commendable it’s worth celebrating. Every Heart contains a murder mystery, tales of worlds beyond our own, coming-of-age commentary, hardship, loss, and so much more. Her words about magic have a way of becoming magic on the page, and her narratives are joyous to read. It’s a testament to McGuire’s talent that these precariously perched elements all blend together so well. This is a story about stories, and the layers are stacked with such care that it’s easy to balance them all even as the pages whisk by at breakneck speed. The effortless homage to classic portal fantasy and the subversion of the tropes it has created reverberate throughout the book’s plot. Every Heart a Doorway, clocking in at a brisk 163 pages, packs a dense narrative punch. It’s hard to do right by Seanan McGuire’s beautiful plot with only a short paragraph like that. Nancy quickly learns that all of Eleanor West’s students wish, on some level, to return “home.” Tragedy strikes as a fellow student is murdered, and Nancy spirals into the darkness of her new world as she and her new cohorts struggle to stay alive while simultaneously trying to solve the murder. Lands of sugar and sweets, worlds where children can run across rainbows, goblin kingdoms, fairy worlds, frolicking skeletons, and many others are counted among the places her peers have visited–and left. The Home for Wayward Children hosts a few dozen students who found portals to other worlds. There, Nancy discovers that her story, though unique in its details, is more common than she thought. Convinced of her “delusions” after what they believe was a kidnapping, Nancy’s parents send her to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. After finding a doorway to the Land of the Dead, Nancy spent months learning to be perfectly still, walking the pomegranate orchards under a dark sky, and dancing with the Lord of the Dead.

When protagonist Nancy finds herself ejected from The Land of the Dead back into the “real” world– our world–her parents don’t understand her anymore. Through expert world-building and a sharp writing style, Every Heart A Doorway provides a heart-wrenching look at belonging, acceptance, and what it means to be stripped of them.

Seanan McGuire weaves a poignant tale in Every Heart A Doorway, the first novella in her award-winning Wayward Children series.

Every heart a doorway by seanan mcguire