Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire | Review

This review is spoiler-free!

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
Series: Wayward Children #2
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy
Release Date: June 13th 2017 by Tor.com
Format: Hardcover, 189 pages
Rating: ★★★★☆
Find it here: Goodreads || Book Depository

I loooove these stories. I can’t get over how much I love these stories. I wish I could write like this!

This second book in the series wasn’t like the first one — instead of being with the kids at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, we’re thrown into the beginnings of a story for two of the children we met in the first book — Jack and Jill. Or, Jaqueline and Jillian, if you will.

I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this knowing it wasn’t going to be like the first one (because I really did adore the first one), but I was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked being able to go back and learn about not only why the girls became who they were, but what happened to them as they were becoming those girls we meet in the first book. The world we’re given in this second installment is so interesting, and it makes me hope more of the kids’ stories will be published at some point! (I say this because at this point I’ve already read Beneath the Sugar Sky and I know it’s not a prequel like this one is, it’s more like the first book.)

Once again, though, I wish the book had been longer. I do enjoy the shortness of the story and how easy it is to get through, but I was left wishing I had known more about it than I had been given because of its length (though, maybe, that’s the point?) and I doubt we’re going to be revisiting the sisters again anytime soon, if at all. So much of the story was dedicated to before they even visited their world!

Which, okay, also interesting, but I was so invested in the land they went to that I wanted more of it instead of what happened before. Also? I wanted to see more of what happened at the end of book one! We weren’t given anything on that (is that a spoiler?) at all, and I wanted so badly to know what became of the twins with the way Jill’s master acted.

Maybe it’ll come up in another book… I can hope! And I can’t wait for more.

Thanks for reading!