The series name, "Wayward Children," is probably what enticed me about this book. I like McGuire's Mira Grant books more than the ones she writes under her own name. In Every Heart a Doorway, Nancy is moving into Miss Eleanor's school (for wayward children) after she disappeared from her family for a time, and came back...different. To Nancy, she discovered her true self; to her parents, their Nancy disappeared. Eleanor is good at talking to parents because she's been at it a good long while. She herself has "disappeared" many times.

Shortly after Nancy arrives at the school, people start dying. Nancy is mostly unruffled, maybe because while she was disappeared, "She had tasted unicorn at one of those feasts, and gone to her bed with a mouth that still tingled from the delicate venom of the horse-like creature's sweetened flesh."

McGuire goes there. This novel is a slip of a thing, which was fine with me. Despite the fact that I felt meh about it, I'm curious what happens next because a few key characters disappear, some presumably for good.