January 2025 Reread: obviously i've always loved this, but this time around in particular it really hit for me. 

1) Every Heart a Doorway ★★★★
2) Down Among the Sticks and Bones ★★★★
3) Beneath the Sugar Sky ★★★★★
4) In an Absent Dream ★★★★★


content warnings: violence, death, necromancy, transphobia
representation: lesbian main character with OCD, fat sapphic main character, f/f main relationship, transgender main character, Mexican-American main character, fat main character, Japanese main character

I don't know what it is about the Moors as a setting that I don't like but my two least favourite books of the series happen to be the ones predominantly set there so there must be something going on. In saying that, I still really like this book, as I do all of Seanan McGuire's work.

Set in the main timeline, Come Tumbling Down follows Christopher, Cora, Kade and Sumi as they travel to the Moors with Jack, who has switched bodies with her sister, and Alexis, Jack's girlfriend who has been recently resurrected.

While this is one of my least favourite books of the series, it does explore maybe my favourite theme its had thus far: bodily autonomy. Jack loathes being in Jill's body, her OCD unable to handle the disgusting things the body has done over time, from needless murder to submitting to a vampire, and she needs to get out of it as soon as possible for her own sanity. But many people initially don't see the problem. "They're twins, their bodies are practically the same, why would it matter?" they say while Jack is slowly dying being forced into a body not her own. The quote I used for this review is one Kade says when Eleanor asks this exact question, a sentiment that I think wouldn't have meant as much if it had come from any character other than Kade.

Like every other book in the Wayward Children series, though, the focus is obviously on plot and characters, all of which I enjoyed well enough. I genuinely don't understand what it is about this that disappointed me. Maybe that the last two books are my favourite in the series, maybe that I want to love the Moors so badly, I have no idea.

Something that certainly didn't disappoint me was the romance we got between Jack and Alexis. Their romance was already incredible in Down Among the Sticks and Bones but this book just amps it up to an eleven. There are so many beautiful quotes about the ways they understand each other in ways others don't and the impact they've had on each other that made me want to scream while listening to my audiobook.

This review is extremely scattered because that's lowkey how I'm feeling right now. I feel like this sounded kind of negative but I swear I did really enjoy this. I think I felt the way about this that a lot of people did about Beneath the Sugar Sky, i.e. really enjoying it but not caring much after finishing reading. This series is still incredible, I still think everyone should read it, and I'm still going to pre-order book six.