Even though Seanan McGuire does something different with each of these books, you know what you're going to get going in: a lot of beautiful language and a short but never-boring jaunt into someplace thrillingly elsewhere. This series feels like dropping into a book the way many of us did as children, and continues to speak to the part of us that suspects we were simply not made for this world, but maybe, somewhere, there's a place where we belong, and all we have to do to get there is find the right door and Be Sure.

Where the Drowned Girls Go answers the question I didn't know I had: What about kids who come back through their doors so rattled that they don't want to go back? What about the kids who would rather forget? And then it adds some chilling twists that hit the same spinal notes as fairy tales and Coraline.

I'm kind of amazed that seven books in, I still like this series, but I'm glad about that, too.