Whereas I’ve had clear feelings on the previous installments in the Wayward Children series immediately after finishing, I truly don’t know what to make of Come Tumbling Down. I went in with minimal knowledge — as I tend to do with these novellas — but expected to love it. Surely, my less-than-stellar experience with In an Absent Dream was a fluke. This latest novella wouldn’t disappoint me.

Unfortunately, it did.

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy it. Returning to the idiosyncratic characters I knew and loved was great; the various dynamics and plentiful banter brought a smile to my face more than once. Even on their own, the protagonists were well-rounded and fun to read. We’ve got Jack, the girl that’s tough around everyone except her girlfriend; Sumi, the overly optimistic friend ready for adventure of any sort; and Kade, one of my personal favorites, who’s not really in the mood for your crap but wants to make sure you don’t die. I didn’t feel much of a connection to any of the other characters — not Christopher, or Cora, or Alexis.

On a similar note, I just didn’t really feel connected to anything. The plot was interesting enough, but I wasn’t invested. In the last third of the book, I increased the audiobook speed and didn’t care if I missed minor details. Pretty sure that’s not how one is intended to use audiobooks, but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There are exactly two reasons I didn’t give this novella a lower rating: the sapphic romance and the audiobook narration. The former is an established relationship between Jack and Alexis, a girl with a perfect balance of tenderness and fierceness. They were SO CUTE and of course I loved them. It would take a lot of crap for me to even remotely dislike a sapphic couple. Now, as for the latter, I liked that the author read the story. McGuire did an impressive job narrating, switching voices for various characters and not sounding cringeworthy. I’m not sure if this will make sense, but they’ve just got a good voice for this sort of thing.

All in all, Come Tumbling Down wasn’t my favorite novella in the series — that would be Beneath the Sugar Sky — but it did have a few redeemable elements. If we were lucky enough to get more Wayward Children stories, I would probably read them. For now, though, I might peruse some of McGuire’s other work.

Representation:
• Jack is sapphic and in a relationship with Alexis. She has OCD.
• Alexis is fat and sapphic. She sometimes communicates using sign language, though she can speak in most situations.
• Kade is a trans boy.
• Sumi is Japanese, if I remember correctly.
• Christopher is Latinx, if memory serves.
• Cora is fat and only has one hand. I don’t remember if she uses a prosthetic or not.

CW: blood, murder, death, mutilation, gore (A man is killed and beheaded. This doesn’t occur on page, but there is a description of the body when the protagonists discover it.)