Every Heart a Doorway

Sometimes a writer hits a premise that's so brilliant, you get angry with yourself for not thinking of it first. Seanan McGuire did just that with this book. What happens to the protagonists in fantastical stories who journey through a portal to another land, live an entirely different life, and then get expelled back into the boring world, the world where they're no longer the savior of nations or the most beautiful, or the whatever-it-took-to-complete-the-story-in-their-portal-world. How do you come back from something like that?

In this book, they get sent to a special school/therapy home that tries to teach them how to be “normal” again. The home has varying degrees of success on its residents. Some acclimate back to the normal world and go off to work a 9-to-5 and have families. Others...don't.

When the main character returns from her Underworld adventure where she became the beloved of the Lord of the Dead, she has trouble fitting into the school, but clicks with a group of misfits (even in a home of misfits) and gets to the bottom of a murder mystery.

The book's premise is brilliant. The prose is graceful. The characters are interesting–familiar to those who have read fairy tales, but still with a hint of uniqueness. McGuire makes use of interesting cliched tropes, but spins them in a way that feels new.

I'll probably read the sequels, but the books are really geared more toward YA girls. My almost-15-year-old daughter is loving the book.