Where the Drowned Girls Go

By Seanan McGuire

Winner: 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novella
Winner: 2022 Hugo Award for Best Series

In Where the Drowned Girls Go, the next addition to Seanan McGuire's beloved Wayward Children series, students at an anti-magical school rebel against the oppressive faculty

"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...

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jan 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250213617

Seanan McGuire

SEANAN McGUIRE is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award–winning Wayward Children series, the October Daye series, the InCryptid series, and other works. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. Seanan lives in Seattle with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls, horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot. In 2022 she managed the same feat, again!

Book preview

1 SO MANY WAYS TO DROWN

CORA MILLER WOKE WITH a start in a room that was still dark, drenched in the moonlight coming through the window, with the sound of screams ringing in her ears. She sat up in bed, her heart pounding, and tried to catch her breath, waiting for the moment when her roommate would demand to know why she’d been screaming again, wasn’t she tired of waking up terrified every night, didn’t she think it was time to talk to the school’s new therapist?

But the new therapist—a very nice woman named Nichole, who had moved into the office that used to belong to Katherine Lundy, hanging her diplomas on the walls alongside cheerful motivational posters and pictures of her dogs—had gone through her door more than thirty years ago, and had come home with a head stuffed full of pleasant memories and happy dreams. She believed that it was possible to move beyond the doors, to grow into someone who could be happy in this world forever, forsaking all others. Based on what she’d told the students, nothing on the other side of her door had been malicious, or malevolent, or made of teeth.

No, Cora didn’t want to talk to Nichole. Didn’t want to sit down with a pleasantly smiling woman in a pleasantly decorated office and listen to her tell pleasantly couched lies about how things were going to get better. Things weren’t going to get better. Maybe not ever.

Antoinette didn’t say anything. She was still dead to the world, one arm flung over her face to block the watery moonlight, her hair spread out across her pillow like a riot of coral fronds. The moon could tint everything in silver, could wash the world in white, but it couldn’t steal the foxfire brightness from Antsy’s hair. Sometimes Cora wondered if Antsy’s hair was the reason Eleanor had decided they should share a room. If you have two girls with unrealistically brightly colored hair, let them clog up the same bathtub drain seemed like the sort of logic Eleanor liked to trade in.

It wasn’t like they had very much else in common. Cora had traveled to the Trenches, an underwater world full of mermaids, mysteries, and maritime monsters. Her door had opened when she tried to take her own life, unable to endure one more day of the constant judgmental mockery of the people who were supposed to be her peers, and just when she’d been finding her fins in the deeps, a whirlpool had swept her back into the life she had never expected to return to.

Antoinette had traveled to a Nonsense world, and a dry one at that, a place of jumbled boxes and endless shelves, where all the lost things went. I got lost, and so I went where the lost things go was how she had explained it, as matter-of-factly as if nothing could have possibly made more sense. She was fickle and fractious, and would have made a better roommate for Sumi. Only Sumi wasn’t required to have a roommate anymore, since apparently the rules were different for people who had died and come back.

It wasn’t fair, but what about the world really was? The jagged lines of her latest nightmare were still lingering, not expunged by screaming as they would normally have been; they cast strange shadows in the corners of the room, shadows that moved and twisted and bent, like the tentacled arms of some great, terrible—

Cora shuddered and pulled her eyes away from the wall, swiping her hands across them in short, furious motions, like nightmares were just another bit of grit that could be wiped away. At least with the lights down, she couldn’t see her own skin; couldn’t see the thin scrim of oil-slick iridescence that covered every inch of her, and had since she danced with the Drowned Gods in the waters of the Moors.

She swung her legs around to plant her feet on the floor, finally admitting that sleep was finished for the night: sleep was over and done. Maybe she could catch a nap in the early afternoon, when the sun was thick and buttery, and even the deepest shadows were easy to see through.

Antoinette still didn’t stir. Cora took a moment to breathe and look at her roommate, waiting for her heart to settle in her chest. She used to be able to sleep like that. She used to put her head down on the pillow and let the night take her away, off into dreams full of deep, diamond-dappled water, diving down where the currents were warm and the waters were always welcoming.

Since the Moors, though … since the Moors, her dreams were still full of water and waves, but the sea she swam in while she slept was no longer remotely kind. It was filled with teeth, and colder than she would have believed the water could be. Worst of all were the whispers, which moved with the tide and promised her anything she wanted—promised her the world’s oceans, promised to return her fins and scales and free her from the bonds of gravity, if she would just stop trying so hard to swim away from them. All they wanted was to love her. All they needed her to do was turn around and let them in.

The halls of the school were empty at this hour. If Christopher was awake, he would be wandering in the trees behind the building, playing his flute for the small midnight creatures that moved among the roots, hoping not to be seen. He was the only quasi-nocturnal student currently in residence, with Nancy having gone back to the Halls of the Dead and Jack at home in the Moors. It made the school feel a little darker at night, knowing that everyone else was sleeping.

Cora’s tenure at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children hadn’t overlapped with Nancy or the Wolcott twins, but her shadows hadn’t always been so tangled, or so tempting. She used to sleep through the night. She used to be fine with solitude on the rare evenings when she couldn’t.

She walked along the hall as quietly as possible, wincing every time a floorboard creaked or the foundation made a small, settling groan, waiting for one of the doors lining the hall to slam open and reveal one of her fellow students, disheveled and angry at being woken from a sound night’s sleep. If that happened, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop herself from slapping someone and waking the rest of the hall as she screamed, "So you got woken up once. So what? I haven’t slept through the night in months!"

But no doors opened. The halls remained empty, and the classrooms she passed on her way to the bathroom were the same, their doors standing open and the blinds pulled down over their windows. All those rooms would be full soon enough, packed with students who didn’t necessarily want to learn, but who didn’t want to spend all their time sitting quietly and waiting for the world to shift under their feet. They’d been lucky enough to see the world change once. Most of them wouldn’t be lucky enough to see it change again.

And even if they did, luck wasn’t always good.

Cora shivered as she walked along the hall. Kade had his Compass, his little map to all the different worlds represented by the student body, but it wasn’t accurate. It could never be accurate. Worlds could be oriented in different directions but still be very, very similar to one another. Drowned Worlds were Drowned Worlds, regardless of whether or not they had Logical rules or leaned toward the Wicked. A direction wasn’t a description, it was just a set of … of fundamental rules. Saying that any two people who’d traveled in the same direction had to get along was like saying that two people who’d experienced the same kind of gravity as children had to be the best-of bestest best

Reviews for Where the Drowned Girls Go

[herenya_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I’ve skipped the Wayward Children novellas that sound too dark for my tastes, but I met Cora in Beneath the Sugar Sky (and Reagan in Across the Green Grass Fields). Cora decides she needs a different approach in the aftermath of her most recent portal-world adventure and transfers to Whitethorn Institute, where things are run very differently.This had the potential to explore how different education environments suit different people, because people have different needs… but instead goes for something that's less subtle, less nuanced and more politically pointed. And I'm not really surprised.Otherwise, it's a well-written and tense episode. I'll keep being selective about which ones in this series I read.Sometimes she felt like the world where she’d been born was the most nonsensical of them all. Sure, gravity always worked and clouds didn’t talk, but people told lies big enough to block the sun, and everyone just let them, like it was nothing to revise the story of an entire world to make yourself feel better.

[glennis.leblanc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The latest in this line of novellas is better if you have read the previous two. It isn’t necessary to have read all of them but the previous two have people that are featured in this one. Cora isn’t dealing well with coming back from the Moors. She wants to go back to the Trenches but the Drowned Gods in the deep waters of the Moors want her more. Cora can’t take the calls in her dreams leaving her with sleepless nights she begs to go to the other school for Wayward Children. The one for kids that don’t want to travel back to their worlds but the slam the door shut and live here forever. But once she is there it is not what she thought, and she is desperate to escape. And one day she gets a new roommate, someone she knows very well and then the reader finds out just what the Whitethorn Institute is doing.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

[tuusannuuska-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Wayward Children series is pretty inconsistent for me, and over all it falls into the "good but not great" category.

This novella takes place mostly in a second institution for children who have visited alternate worlds. And I actually found it much more interesting (if far less pleasant) than our usual boarding school.

The best part about these books is the varied representation, and the concepts of the different worlds. However, I always feel like McGuire attempts to fit a novels worth of plot and character arc into less than 200 pages, and they always end up feeling too rushed and watery for me. I don't want watery, I want full bodied and rich.

This wasn't my favorite in the series, but it wasn't my least favorite either. The short length works in favor of these less than stellar installments, because at least they go by quickly.

[kalliegrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved moving to the dark side of this universe with the school for kids who want to forget, or maybe are being forced to forget. I wish these were just a bit longer though, it gets interesting right when it's about to end!

[fred_mouse · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Here, in book 7 of the Wayward Children series, I'm suddenly getting a more nuanced feel for how the stories fit together. Having just finished it, I think it is the best, but also the darkest of the series so far. The story loops back to Cora, who has been one of the ensemble in a previous story. Here, we get a clear stage for Cora to shine, and shine they do. But we also get to see an alternative path for those who return through their doors -- an alternative school, with a very different treatment focus for the students. I found the pedagogy of the school really difficult to read, and it is part of why I say it is dark. There are a lot of fascinating bits of world building, with the focus being on the common 'mundane' world that the children have all come from. Very interested in seeing how this adds together.Up to now, I'd say that we have very much had a child/adolescent viewpoint on the doors, the alternate worlds, and the lives of the children who return. This one takes a step back, and while the story is still told from the younger viewpoint, the larger story it is telling is much more adult -- much more recognition of what is at stake beyond family, familiarity, and homecontent warnings: emotional abuse, school based trauma, identity theft

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cora decides that she needs to find a way to keep the monsters away so she transfers from Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children to Whitethorn where things are different and where the regime is designed to normalise you, no matter how much damage that might do to your psyche. But beneath the numbing regime there's something else lurking, some plotting that when it meets Cora and later Sumi who has decided to rescue Cora, it fails to break them.Regan is also in this story and plays a pivotal role.This series keeps getting darker but you can see themes stay the same. Personal choice and freedom of expression are at the heart of each of the stories and finding a place that allows you to be more wholly you being important for everyone.I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.

[tornadox-962417 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another lovely entry. This one mostly takes place at the other school for wayward children, the one for children who don’t want to return to their lives beyond the Doors.
Oddly enough, this is the first one where I haven’t cried buckets of tears. But it is sooooooo good.

[jennybeast · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I continue to love this series, and to appreciate all the unexpected places the storyline takes us. Much like the wayward children, we never know what door is going to open next. Cora is fantastic, and I love to see her come into her own, even if the ways she travels are toxic.

Advanced Reader's Copy provided by Edelweiss.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Cora, a former mermaid, is so haunted by the drowned gods she encountered in a previous book that she decides to transfer to the other school, the one where they encourage students to forget their experiences and see them as delusions. It doesn’t go well. At this point in the series, I think you know if you’ll like it.

[lavaturtle · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A story full of kindness, set in a place with little kindness to be found. I loved seeing Cora and Sumi and Ragen again, and we learned some intriguing things about the world. Loved the ending.

[verkruissen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

These books just get better and better with each installment. Highly recommend to anyone who dreams of escaping the world through a magical door.

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good writing (of course), exciting action with quite a few scary bits (the truth behind Whitethorn School!)...but the story pretty much ends up where it started. Well, at least one new character - maybe Marian gets the next story? And this one was necessary to explain where she was coming from? Don't know. Some interesting insights into Sumi and Cora, too. And we get to see Regan again, and she gets integrated into the main line. Still - fun read, but there doesn't seem to be much point to it; hopefully, it's building up to the next arc.

[liscarey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Cora Miller, the girl who went through the Door to the world of the Trenches, became a mermaid, had the experience of being a true hero but overall very traumatic experience in the Moors, and returned home to our world, has loved Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children. Unfortunately, it hasn't been helping her in the way she thinks she needs. After much thought, she asks to be transferred to the other school for returning travelers, The Whitehorn Institute.The Whitehorn Institute is a very different place, very strict, very disciplined, very inflexible, aimed at making the students forget their alternate worlds and the doors that took them there. It's not a kind place, or a safe one.CW: Fatphobia, suicidal ideation, bullying, and ableism. Mental and emotional abuse from the Headmaster and the Matrons.Cora initially finds herself being beaten down, and perhaps letting go of some of her grip on her memories. She also meets girls very different from herself, including the Nameless Girl, and some months in, is surprised by a very familiar face as another new student--but who has a very different goal than Cora.This is a novella, and I can't say anything more that's specific. It's a story about Cora finding her own inner strength, and figuring out what's really going on at The Whitehorn Institute. It's emotionally complex and rewarding, and thoroughly enjoyable, I will say it's even more enjoyable if you've already read Beneath the Sugar Sky and Come Tumbling Down, because events in those novellas are the background for Cora's trauma. However, I think you can follow and enjoy this book on its own, too.Highly recommended.I bought this audiobook.

[tapestry100 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There are schools other than Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, and in @seananmcguire’s latest from @tordotcompub, Where the Drowned Girls Go, we are introduced to the Whitethorn Institute and its staff of nameless matrons and a headmaster who is remarkably unmemorable.After her journey to the Moors and her brush with the Drowned Gods there, Cora decides she needs a different path than the one Miss West’s school is offering her. She transfers to the Whitethorn Institute and quickly discovers there is something very wrong with this school. When Sumi also transfers to the Institute with the express purpose of bringing Cora home, the friends quickly discover that if they are to survive in this world or any other, they need to escape the seemingly impenetrable walls of Whitethorn. Turns out, sometimes all you need is a little inner strength and faith in yourself to defeat your demons.McGuire gives us our first true villain in the “real” world, and I’m here for him. There is so much mystery surrounding Whitethorn and his institute and he’s so damned unnerving. An excellent, if not slightly terrifying, addition to the cast of characters for these books.

[hcnewton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.--- And everyone knew that things from the other side of the door could absolutely leak through into this reality. Her hair had been brown, not aquamarine, before she found her fins. Christopher would die without his flute—literally die. Seraphina was the kind of beautiful that stopped hearts, and everyone who'd seen pictures of her from before her travels said that she hadn’t always been like that. She’d been attractive, not impossible. The doors made changes. The doors stayed with you.WHAT'S WHERE THE DROWNED GIRLS GO ABOUT?Things have gone poorly for Cora since her return from the Moors, and things are getting worse for her. She's now afraid of getting a door—because it might not lead to the world she wants. So now that "other school" starts to sound appealing to her. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to feel at home in this world—it's certainly better than one of the alternatives. There's no way that she'll get those tools at this school (as much as she likes/loves her friends).So she talks West into transferring her—and regrets the decision before the ink is dried. Still, she sets out to make the best of a bad situation—it's still going to get her the results she's been desiring, just not in a pleasant way.Cora tackles the situation in a "no pain, no gain" manner. West's school wasn't helping (at least not the way she wanted), the Whitethorn Institute isn't going to save her, it's up to Cora to save herself.WHITEHORN INSTITUTE "You've always said that there was a second school." Eleanor pulled her hands away. “The Whitethorn Institute. Cora, you can’t intend—” “You said they steal your students sometimes. That when you're not fast enough, or when the children are having a harder time adapting to life in this reality, that sometimes Whitethorn gets there first.” She sat up straight, giving Eleanor a challenging look. “You said it was where students go when they want to believe that everything that happened on the other side of the door was just a dream, or a delusion, and not a real thing at all.”We've known about "the other school" for children who come back through their doors into our world—one for those who didn't want to see their doors again, one for those who want to feel at home in this world. But this is the first time we've seen it.It is not a nice place to be.That's about all I feel comfortable about saying—you'll need to read the book to see how it's not a nice place to be. I get that (especially as the series takes a pro-Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children stance) it's not going to seem as nice, welcoming, and affirming as the school we're used to. I expected that this school would come across as wanting, not just in contrast, but objectively,But I think McGuire approached that idea in a lazy manner. It's too obviously a bad environment. She had the chance to go subtle, and she didn't take it. I kept thinking, "Oh, she's making a commentary about X or Y" in the real world—but she was doing so with too broad a brush, and it'd end up applying to things she didn't mean to attack.Still, if you're looking to make an establishment a villain, she did an effective job. I think it'd have been more interesting—and more fitting with the series—if there'd been more nuance to it. Give the readers a second school that has differing goals from the Home for Wayward Children, but let us respect them while disagreeing—then you've got something. Instead, we get an institution that might as well be twirling its mustache.REAGANIt's not just Cora that we see here, Regan's also came to this school after returning from the Hooflands. I appreciated that. I didn't think we had enough of Regan—but it didn't feel like the character would be showing up at West's.SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT WHERE THE DROWNED GIRLS GO?McGuire is simply one of the best around—and this world she's created in this series is just wonderful and I really enjoy all the time I spend in it. But this book seemed to be missing something. The previous books in the series all left the possibility open to revisiting the world on the other side of the door, the POV character, and so on—while telling a complete story.This novel is also a complete story—but it feels (at least to me) too much like a Part One of at least a two-parter (if not three). And I think the book suffered from it. When we get to that second part, I might change my mind about this book, but now it just feels incomplete. Add in my problems with the presentation of Whitethorn and it makes for a less-satisfying read than I'm used to for this series.I still recommend it as a read—you're instantly sucked into this world, it's fantastic to get a look at Whitethorn (if nothing else); the story of Cora, Regan, and the others is well-worth telling and reading; and McGuire's language and imagination in this series are always fascinating. I just wanted more of this good thing.

[benchroma · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely delightful exploration of the larger universe these books are set in. The motivations of the character's were clear and compelling, even when it felt like choices I wouldn't make. I still absolutely love Cora as a character and she carries the story well. Getting to see the inside of the Other School left me wanting more in a good way. I continue to appreciate a cast of characters that is well rounded.

[strider66_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pros: thought provoking, plus sized protagonist, interesting storyCons:Cora Miller is still having nightmares months after returning from the Moors and no longer believes Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children can help her. So she transfers to the other school for children who have found doors to other worlds, Whitethorn. Upon arrival she realizes she’s made a terrible mistake. But while it’s easy to enter Whitethorn, it’s very hard to leave.This is the 7th novella in the Wayward Children series and relies on knowledge of the prior books to really work. You find out what happened to Regan after the events of Across the Green Grass Fields as Cora deals with the trauma of visiting the Moors in Come Tumbling Down.Cora is a fantastic character and though it’s not her origin story (so no mermaid adventures in the Trenches) it was wonderful watching her grow and realize that she doesn’t need to be in a portal world to be a hero. And that sometimes you just have to deal with your problems head on.I found the book thought provoking as it pointed out some of the daily horrors humans inflict on each other, especially towards those with larger bodies.The story is engaging and the perfect length.

[amym3317 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After her run-in with the Drowned Gods while on the Moors, Cora is finding it difficult to get their voices out of her dreams. She knows that as long as they have her, she cannot go back to the Trenches as she wouldn't lead them back to the place that saved her life once upon a time. Cora knows that she needs to change the way things are progressing, so she decides to leave Eleanor West's and chooses to go to the Whitethorn Institute where they claim to be able to rehabilitate those whose doors have closed and help them get back into "normal" society. But Cora discovers Whitethorn is full of forgotten secrets. I always look forward to these books. Where the Drowned Girls Go is like a converging of the storylines from [book:Come Tumbling Down|44804083] and [book:Across the Green Grass Fields|53205924]. Longtime readers will certainly recognize previous characters and will appreciate the pick-up of a previous storyline. I feel like the series, thus far, has kind of been divided up into multiple story arcs and I think this one could be the start of another one. This one is definitely in my top favorites of this series. We've been to many fantastical places but I liked kind of seeing another side to the "real world". It definitely opens up other pathways for the series and I can even imagine this setup following the series until the end where I'm hoping a beloved character finally gets their story.This series is always such a treasure in how it deals with traumas and friendships and all those difficult things that moving through life will bring. But most of all I love how it highlights heroes and strength and perseverance.

[ladycato · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.Where the Drowned Girls Go is the 7th novella in McGuire's incredible Wayward Children series about children who slip through portals to other worlds and return, to various consequences. I rate a couple of these novellas as among the best things I have ever read. This one falls into a middle ground. It's a good read, and features some incredibly profound moments, but can't match some of the other books.Cora has suffered after the events of other novellas. She is haunted by other-worldly gods who will not let her go. Miss Eleanor and friends at the Home for Wayward Children try to help her, but she's only worsening. Therefore, she makes a drastic choice to switch to another school for children who have returned from other worlds. She finds a place that is disturbing, a place where everything is not what it seems.This is a good read--good pace, good relatable characters (as someone who was obese in school, wow did I relate to Cora), good exploration of this fascinating world. I hope McGuire continues to write in this series, as I fully intend to read them all.

[readinggeek451 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There is another school for children who have returned through their doors: Whitethorn. Unlike Mrs. West's School for Wayward Children, it is a rigid, dismal place, designed to brainwash students into accepting this world as their best, right, true, proper home. Cora, once a mermaid, doesn't know that when she requests a transfer; she just knows that she needs to forget.A worthy entry in the series.