Synopsis (From Goodreads)
Welcome to the Whitethorn Institute. The first step is always admitting you need help, and you’ve already taken that step by requesting a transfer into our company.
There is another school for children who fall through doors and fall back out again.
It isn’t as friendly as Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.
And it isn’t as safe.
When Eleanor West decided to open her school, her sanctuary, her Home for Wayward Children, she knew from the beginning that there would be children she couldn’t save; when Cora decides she needs a different direction, a different fate, a different prophecy, Miss West reluctantly agrees to transfer her to the other school, where things are run very differently by Whitethorn, the Headmaster.
She will soon discover that not all doors are welcoming…
My Review
3 out of 5 stars
I’d like to start off this review with the fact that this is number SEVEN in this series. I’ve read SEVEN books in this series? Wow! Granted, these books are very short, and I read the first book in 2017, so it hasn’t quite been seven years, but man, time flies.
This installment is similar to the first book in that it is setting up the subsequent books in the series. After 6 books following Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, it’s time to introduce a counterpart to her home, one that teaches wayward children to deny their portal worlds and move on. While it’s an interesting direction for the series, I wasn’t a huge fan of this book overall. This is in part due to me thinking, from the title, that we would go to Cora’s Mermaid/Siren/Ocean world, The Trenches. Though Cora had an event happen to her in a previous book that had her questioning her world, I was interested in exploring it, and maybe having Cora interact with it in a negative way. However, Cora does not go to her world, and instead goes to this other home to get away from her old world’s influence. I just wasn’t interested in the overall plot; it was not as whimsical as other books. It does incorporate some characters from the previous installments, and introduces characters who I’m sure we’ll go explore next. But this book is mainly setting the stage for the direction of the rest of the books.
I do want to give some credit to Cora. She is probably the strongest and most developed character in the series. She has to deal with being bullied or judged due to her weight. Her perspective is one that is body positive. Cora’s a good character to lead the way in showing the negative impacts of portal worlds on children; she’ll overcome them.
Thank you to the publisher for providing a free eARC via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
See this review on Storygraph and on Goodreads.
Mad Scibrarian 