How did Alice cope with reality after she escaped Wonderland? That is the exact premise of Seanan McGuire’s 2016 novel Every Heart a Doorway.
When Nancy finds a mysterious door in her cellar, she opens it to find the glimmeringly dark Halls of the Dead, where she spends what feels like years serving the Lord of the Underworld, Hades. When she is sent back to the real world, her parents whisk her away to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children: a school for children who have returned or been kicked out from their magical realms. When students are found murdered, Nancy bands together with her schoolmates to solve a mystery threatening their lives. This slim novel is part fantasy, part mystery, and wholeheartedly stunning.
This book has some of the best worldbuilding I have read. Not only is the entire premise genius, but the way McGuire crafts these worlds is so genuine. From Lundy’s Goblin-market-inspired land to Nancy’s Greek myth underworld to Sumi’s Candyland dream, the lands each character is swept into reflect their inner desires:
“‘For us, the places we went to 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.’”
You will fall in love with characters like Kade or Christopher and sympathize with their yearning to return home. The novel is quite short, just shy of 200 pages, but every sentence is so riveting that you feel pulled toward the end of every page. The ending had me speechless; I thought I knew what the novel was about, but McGuire pulled the rug underneath me.
I highly recommend this book if you are a fan of dark fantasy or young adult literature. But I also recommend this novel if you need a palate cleanser; it is a quick and engaging read that will get you out of a slump, and you might just discover a new series to enjoy.
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