Where the Drowned Girls Go is book 7 in the Wayward Children series and this one is the most similar to book 1. Every Heart a Doorway is set in Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children which is a place that children who have travelled through doors stay while hoping the world they truly belong to comes back for them. In Where the Drowned Girls Go we follow one of the students who after going through a traumatic experience doesn’t feel like they fit at the school. They decide to transfer to a sister school called the Whitethorn Institute which unlike Eleanor West’s it is for children that want to forget their experiences through the doors and go back to normal life. Everything is not all that it appears at this school though. Not as welcoming. Not as safe.

I love that we got to see some expansion on the world outside the doors. Learning more about what happens outside Eleanor’s Wests school & the doors was an interesting addition. Don’t get me wrong I love the uniqueness of the worlds behind the doors but it was interested seeing the other side of things.

I also enjoyed that this one dealt with some more ‘normal’ problems compared to trying to save the world or making sure you electrocute your girlfriend often enough so she can talk… This one dealt with trauma and how people can try and pretend it didn’t happen compared to actually dealing with it. Our MC is also fat, so we dealt with some fatphobia as well as internal fatphobia with the MC which I think was done quite well. Especially discussion on the idea that everyone who is fat is eating unhealthily and not being active as if that’s the only possible way someone can be fat. Which is extremely unrealistic… Some awesome discussion throughout on the topic.

As always Seanan McGuire has amazing writing with the ability to build worlds so vividly, even the more realistic ones… There was some amazing character development throughout for both our MC and the more side characters. I love McGuire’s ability to interlock all the stories in little ways as well. I enjoyed seeing old characters return like Sumi & Reagan!

Overall I highly recommend this series. Each book is around 200 pages or less. The audiobooks are awesome & they are fun, action packed & usually high stake books that keep you hooked from the very beginning!

Firstly, who was going to tell me that this wasn’t book 3 to Fable and it actually a companion following a completely new character because that threw me off completely! I had no idea this wasn’t a sequel and I was a little disappointed to find out that we wouldn’t be following Fable or any of the characters we really knew already. That was my fault though, so let’s jump into the actual review of what I thought of this one.

Firstly this doesn’t live up to Fable or Namesake. Those books were incredible with extremely vivid worlds & unique and interesting characters. This one fell flat though in most aspects. Don’t get me wrong it was still a good book but if you compare them it’s not on the same level.

My main issue with this one was the ending. I felt like it built up and built up for this big finale but then it kinda just ended. Not much really happened and I was left underwhelmed wondering where the rest of it was. The ending also felt rushed compared to the rest of the book which was slower paced.

Another issue I had was with the characters and romance. The romance was predictable and the characters had minimal development. I didn’t have the same connection with these characters as I did with the characters in Fable. Even the side characters from Fable I had more of a connection to than the MC of The Last Legacy.

I loved the plot of this one and it had so much potential but besides the plot & the vivid world it fell a little flat for me. I think if this was a book on it’s own I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more but because I spent the whole time comparing it to Fable it ended up not as enjoyable.

Overall I would recommend giving it a go as it’s definitely not a bad book and the world is vivid and the plot was full of twists and turns. I rated it 3.5 stars as a book on it’s own but if I was to rate it directly compared to Fable it would be more like a 2.5/3 stars. I would suggest reading this one first but unfortunately you wouldn’t be able to read this one first without spoiling the ending of Namesake!

I’ve been on a Mystery Thriller kick and I wanted to give another book by Chelsea Pitcher a go. This one however didn’t live up to expectations.

Lies Like Poison felt very disjointed to me. The story was all over the place and the pacing was a little off. I felt very disconnected from the mystery & kind of lost interest towards the end.

I also found this one a lot more predictable than This Lie Will Kill You, which is the other book I read by the same author. I think that was one of the things that led to my lack of interest for the mystery in the end as I guessed it fairly early on.

Oh and the characters were all kind of annoying. I think a couple of them were meant to be unlikeable but I didn’t really care for any of them that much. Which again added to my lack of interest in what happened in the end.

Overall, I didn’t particularly care for this one. It wasn’t necessarily bad but I was underwhelmed and just didn’t find myself caring for the characters or what happened to them. I think This Lie Will Kill You was definitely a stronger book than Lies Like Poison.