The problems with this novella: Characters who talk like expository infodumps, fantasy rules that are belabored and nonsensical at the same time, and why exactly did Jack need the others' help? They didn't really do anything except watch her resolve her own problem.

For the first time, I'm more frustrated than charmed by McGuire's Wayward Children. Possibly because Jack and Jill are the least interesting characters from the least interesting world. Jill is completely irredeemable and her awfulness drags Jack down with her (in reverse of the rhyme, ha ha). I was hoping, given the first chapter, that Christopher's bone world would be important here. It was not to be.

In the later Wayward Children books, the way these characters flit easily back and forth between their lost worlds also undermines that inconsolable sense of longing that <i>Every Heart a Doorway</i> captured so beautifully - C.S. Lewis called that feeling Sehnsucht, and believed it indicated our soul's knowledge of a real, perfect world beyond ours. I suppose I keep returning to this increasingly flawed series out of a longing for another glimpse of its original joys....I probably won't again.

Received a free copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A great installment to the Wayward Children series, Mcguire combines the best of whimsy and solid character development with heart wrenching storylines that speak to any of us who have ever felt out of place.

I’ve known for many years now that Seanan McGuire (and one of her many pen names Mira Grant) were kindred souls but each of the Wayward Children books she published confirms it even more. This was fabulous! In a way that is hard to explain because it’s not only monstrous but awe-inspiring.

If I had one small critique it would be that the characters mention how awful the Moors are a few too many times. I’d have preferred have the setting and circumstances of our plot speak a little more to the awfulness of this monster riddled world.

In this instalment of Wayward children we return to the story of Jack and Jill; but this time we get to take along some of our favourite children including lead boy of the school Kade, sugary Sumi, bone-obsessed Christopher, and our mermaid Cora. It’s been awhile since I read the other novellas in the series so I was a little lost at first as I tried to remember what worlds these characters were from and what their backstories are. A good reread prior to reading Come Tumbling Down would be a smart choice. And, one of my favourite things about these books, them all being novellas makes that actually feasible without giving up months of the year to reread (which is hard to justify with so many great new books to read!)

Overall this series remains an absolute favourite of mine. I can’t wait for the day I can meet McGuire and ask her how many more worlds she has in mind for our wayward children. The coolest part of this series is it could go on indefinitely with new worlds and characters emerging through the arcing narrative. Seanan McGuire is so clever in her story/series set-up and I hope she keeps this one going for some time.

While I received a free eARC of this book from NetGalley; this is a series I love and so I also bought the print edition prior to reading it. This is an honest and unbiased review regardless of the NetGalley copy generously provided.

Seanan McGuire’s YA/Adult crossover series, Wayward Children, returns to the land of the Moors in COME TUMBLING DOWN. The last Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children saw of twins Jack and Jill was Jack carrying Jill’s dead body through the door to the Moors to bring her back to life. Now, Christopher was minding his own business and daydreaming of his skeleton girl when the portal suddenly opens again. Jill’s body comes out...but Jack’s mind is in it. After stopping to let Eleanor know of their new quest, Christopher, Jack, Cora, Sumi, Kade, and Alexis (Jack’s love) head back to the Moors to get Jack back in her own body and stop whatever scheme Jill is up to.

The Wayward Children installments do so many things well, and my favorites are the voice and worldbuilding. From the first page, McGuire puts the reader right back into the world of Eleanor West’s school with characters you can’t forget. I am forever in awe of the amazing creation of this portal fantasy series and each unique world the characters traveled to. From Jack and Jill’s backstory book, DOWN AMONG THE STICKS AND BONES, we got a good look at what the Moors were like in general (sort of a Frankenstein meets Dracula Gothic landscape). In COME TUMBLING DOWN, we get a deeper look into what maintains balance in the Moors and what happens when that balance is threatened. I truly believe McGuire could write 30 books in this series, and there would still be a plethora of worlds and their functions to explore.

This is the first book we’ve had of Christopher, Jack, Alexis, Sumi, Kade, and Cora all together. Most knew each other from their various stays at Eleanor’s school, but others are brand new to the full gang. Christopher continues to be compelling, and I hope we get his backstory book someday. Cora is still missing her home among mermaids and wants nothing more than to go back. Sumi is, as always, Sumi, ready to adventure and have as much nonsensical fun as possible. I love the way these characters play off each other and work together.

As with every Wayward Children book, I finished this story both in adoration of a new favorite book and terribly sad over the close of another Wayward Children adventure.

Although this has been my least favorite in the Wayward children series so far, it was still incredible. I was so happy to see Jack again as she is my favorite character in the whole series and that will probably never change. My only issue with this book was that the focus wasn't only on Jack, it was on her and all of her friends from school. I loved Down Among the Sticks and Bones because it was all Jack and Jill all the time and the atmosphere of the moors was so good, whereas in this installment it wasn't as present.

Another great addition to the Wayward Children Series. I love Jack & Jill stories and this one didn't disappoint. I think that this book gave Jill a little bit more of a story than was previously given without having to follow her. If that makes sense. I liked that it told us just how desperate and obsessed she was with becoming a vampire, and just how far Jack would go to stop it.

I loved getting to see some old characters, but sometimes dead need to stay dead and I would like to see and learn about new characters in a less chaotic way.

Breathtaking. Pick up this book, along with the rest of the series. Even if you have not read the other books in this series, you can read this one as a stand alone. The worldbuilding is incredible, and the characters are full of life. Highly recommended for all collections.

This series continues to impress and is a great young adult/adult crossover. Perfect for high school libraries.

One of my favorites of this series so far! I have enjoyed most of the books to begin with, so finding a new favorite is quite an accomplishment.

Features the unexpected but not unpleasant (for the reader, anyway, I can't speak for the Wayward Children) the return of Jack and Jill. This, in a new change for the series, circles back and continues storylines from the first two Wayward Children books. Plot feels a like filler occasionally but the twins and the Moors are series favorites. Entertaining, if not the strongest offering.

The Wayward Children books have been hit-or-miss for me. I enjoyed this one less than some of the others, but I appreciated getting resolution on Jack and Jill's story and also seeing a "present day" adventure where the characters can work together. The novella also contains the best description of body dysmorphia I've encountered.

This was a great addition to the Moors and I really like how characters from different stories are starting to connect! This wasn't my favorite in the series, but a solid addition!

Glad to see Jack back again, as she's my favorite character but not much surprise in here and possibly a little bit of fan service? Love this series regardless, but this was not one of the stronger volumes.

Author #Seanan McGuires fifth installment in her fantasy series Wayward Childhood is a full five stars. In this installment, McGuire continues the story of twin sisters,Jack and Jill, whose narrative arc is the focus of the second novella in the series, Down Among The Sticks And Bones, leaving Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children and returning to their beloved home on the Moors.
Hope is a vicious beast.It sinks in its claws and it doesn’t let go.
Thank you,
#Netgalley,#Seanan McGuire And #Tor.com

It's good to return to some of the characters featured earlier in the series, and this one is a fun adventure

The rule at Eleanor West's school is, No Quests. But Jack's back! As this is the fifth installment of the Wayward Children series, readers probably have an idea what they're in for. This chapter picks up strands from the first two books and takes readers back to the moors to help Jack right a grievous wrong. This is also the first chapter that takes place primarily in a world McGuire's already explored. It's an excellent trip. It's dark and poisonous yet filled with strength and camaraderie, and filled with gorgeous imagery. It's a treat to explore this world further, and a treat to take this journey. Though you probably know where it's going, the getting there is magnificent.

"Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children was an island of misfit toys, a place to put the unfinished stories and the broken wanderers who could butcher a deer and string a bow but no longer remembered what to do with indoor plumbing. It was also, more importantly, a holding pen for heroes. Whatever they might have become when they’d been cast out of their chosen homes, they’d been heroes once, each in their own ways. And they did not forget."

Come Tumbling Down (2020), the fifth installment in Seanan McGuire’s WAYWARD CHILDREN YA fantasy series, returns to the conflicted relationship between twins Jack (Jacqueline) and Jill Wolcott, in a some-months-later sequel to where we left them at the end of Every Heart a Doorway. (Down Among the Sticks and Bones is a prequel that tells their story in much more detail, though it’s the second book published in the series.) To recap — spoiler alert for the first and second books here — as children Jack and Jill had found their way to a portal world called the Moors, where Jack was raised by a … if not mad, at least highly peculiar … scientist, and Jill was raised by a master vampire to be his daughter and heir, before they returned to our world and spent some time turning the Home for Wayward Children upside down. When they returned to the Moors at the end of Every Heart a Doorway, Jill was dead at Jack’s hand, but Jack was confident that she could resurrect her sister once they returned to the Moors and, perhaps more important, that because Jill had died and been brought back to life, she would no longer be able to be turned into a vampire.

But Jill is not in the least repentant of her lethal lifestyle, and she and her adoptive vampire father have thought of an ingenious way to get around this limitation. What she’s now done is beyond the pale — not only is it ruining Jack’s life, pushing her to the edge of a mental breakdown, but it’s likely to lead to an imbalance of power and deadly warfare in the Moors world. So Jack, with her girlfriend Alexis, returns to the Wayward Children home to get help from her old friends. Did Eleanor say “no quests”? Oh well!

Come Tumbling Down didn’t quite reach the heights of my favorite books in the series, Down Among the Sticks and Bones and In an Absent Dream, but it comes quite close. McGuire does a great job examining Jack and Jill’s deeply troubled hearts. Jack, brilliant but burdened with OCD, has found joy in the mad scientist lifestyle, at least until the most recent troubles. She calls herself a monster, and in some ways that’s true, but she’s more or less a good-hearted person, if obsessive and demanding. Jill, though, is on a whole different level.

"Jill had always been the more dangerous, less predictable Wolcott, for all that she was the one who dressed in pastel colors and lace and sometimes remembered that people liked it when you smiled. Something about the way she’d wrapped her horror movie heart in ribbons and bows had reminded him of a corpse that hadn’t been properly embalmed, like she was pretty on the outside and rotten on the inside. Terrifying and subtly wrong."

Joining Jack on her quest to set things right again in Jack’s life and in the Moors world are several familiar faces, including Kade (the one-time goblin prince), Christopher (who longs for the magical skeleton world of Mariposa), Cora (the former mermaid with the blue-green hair) and Sumi. They all bring their unique characters and talents to the story. The most delightful was Sumi, whose flighty behavior and off-the-wall comments conceal a sharp mind. She calls the crimson moon in the Moors “the sugared cherry on the biggest murder sundae in the whole world” and is serenely confident that one day she’ll find her way back to the world called Confection, where the gummy worms will eat her body when she dies.

Come Tumbling Down is a quest type of adventure novel, mixing together friendship and horror. It’s lifted above the norm by the quirkiness of the characters, by the tragedy of the broken relationship between twin sisters Jack and Jill, and by Seanan McGuire’s insightful commentary. She muses on what would have happened if Jack had become the vampire’s protégé rather than Jill, and the ruthless business tycoon Sumi would have become if she hadn’t found the door to Confection as a young girl. And she shows us how wayward children can be heroes. Sometimes, even, the monsters are the heroes.

I know Jack is a very popular character among Wayward Children fans, but I don't particularly care for her. Still, the world building was excellent, and the parts about other characters were interesting enough that I still enjoyed the book.

I truly adore all my Wayward Children, perhaps especially my monstrous ones. McGuire gives us both evocative worldbuilding and desperate stakes in this installment, and by the end it all pays off. The struggle is, once you've finished one all you want is the next installment.

There really is no better fantasy writer currently publishing than Seanan McGuire.

In this fifth volume of the Wayward Children series we return to the Moors and the troubled relationship between twins Jack (Jacqueline) and Jill. When last we saw them, Jill was dead by Jack's hand. But death isn't the absolute end here and Jack is hoping that by returning to the Moors, Jill will be resurrected. And perhaps more importantly ... having now died, she will no longer have the power to turn into a vampire. But Jill has no regrets for her life and she an her adoptive father, a vampire, have come up with a workaround to her situation.

This book, a novella really, is just eerie in tone. As all the Wayward Children books have been.

One of the things that occurred to me as I started to read this was that it's not just about McGuire's incredible writing style. She's very poetic and lyrical with her prose, but that poetry draws the reader in, lulling the reader into a false sense of serenity, but what she is writing about with her poetic prose is dark and frightening. It's an interesting contrast, and I've come to realize that it is this - the contrast in writing style with the story that is being told - that appeals to me more so than the story itself.

It is also interesting to note that the true conflict in the book is not so much about restoring Jill's life or even her vampire ways but rather it's the conflict of siblings, of twins, and this kind of conflict is in many ways much more relate-able.

This may not be my favorite Seanan McGuire book, but I will gladly read McGuire any time.

Looking for a good book? Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire is the fifth book in the Wayward Children series. It is not the strongest of the books, but is well worth reading.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.