I'd like to thank Netgalley for an advanced listener copy of this book. In exchange, I am providing an honest review.

I love this series of books so much. Seanan McGuire treats her characters so tenderly, sculpting out full worlds and deep personalities in such a short number of pages. It's clear that these stories are crafted with love, and I am in awe of her talent.

In this book, we get Nadya's story. Nadya has appeared in previous books, and we know how this story will end, but we never got the chance to know her full tale. Here, we get it. Knowing what will come in the end holds a bittersweet sting because the drowned world is an easy one to fall in love with.

A satisfying and well-crafted tale. Please let there be more for years to come.

Another wonderful installment of The Wayward Children. It strikes a fine balance between heavy topics and lightheartedness. And the magic in every world is so different and beautiful. I loved it.

I very much enjoyed this book. It got me interested in the story right away.

I very much enjoyed this book ( audiobook).

I do very much recommend.

I always enjoy this author’s writing and returning to the world of Wayward Children. The descriptions of the drowned world were beautiful, and the way it worked was intriguing. However, I felt that dedicating an entire book to Nadya wasn’t entirely necessary since we were already familiar with her background. That said, I still gave it four stars. I really appreciated how disability was represented in this story—it wasn’t portrayed as a limitation, and Nadya was shown to be fully capable of achieving anything despite not having an arm.

Another Wayward Children book, just as wonderful as the last!

Nadya is a fantastic little girl and I loved her and her love of turtles. The world that Nadya finds herself in feels so unique and I love how even though all of the worlds each child visits, they all have a certain feel to them that connects them all together.

Reaching the end made me anxious as always. I am always hoping that, maybe this time, the children can stay.

Thank you to Netgalley for making this available in exchange for an honest review!

Another charming and bitter sweet fairytale-esque story for the series. However, the moral thrust of the story seems to get stronger with ever novel and, even as I agree with the ideas expressed, I found the push of ideals overpowered the character and plot, to an off-putting amount.

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear is the 10th book in the Wayward Children series. This one tells Nadya's story, who we met in a previous book. However, this series does not have to be read in order, and I find each one to be perfect as a standalone, too.

Nadya, born in Russia with one arm and orphaned at birth by her teenage mother, is adopted by Americans who eventually fit her with a prosthetic arm. She loves turtles, and she didn't ask to leave her homeland, or ask for a replacement arm that she never missed. When she falls through her doorway, she finds Belyrreka, the Land Beneath the Lake. Nadya is a Drowned Girl, who finally finds a home in this strange land.

Sometimes the books in the Wayward Children series are hit or miss for me. There are some worlds and characters I don't love. I really enjoyed this one. Belyrreka was fascinating, and Nadya's story was just as moving as I expected it to be.

I listened to the audiobook, as I have for all the books in this series, and as usual it was a 5 star listen. Barrie Kreinik did a great job.

4.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

4.5/5 rounded up. Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for the ALC!

Another amazing installment in the Wayward Children series. This book is Nadya's story and I gotta say, this was my favorite world yet! It was so unique and captivating, with the different layers of water with different densities and aspects of each one. The giant talking turtles, giant frogs, and talking foxes that abound in this world make it so fun (well...the frogs don't make it fun, they're jerks)! Nadya lives in Belyrreka until she's 19 and there are some older elements, so I'd put this book in the lower NA category, which is a first for this series.

Seanan McGuire, as always, touches on some important topics while also cramming in an insane amount of world building and fantastical elements into a such a short book! Nadya's story is about disability/ability, ableism, immigration, assimilation, belonging, family, identity and acceptance, and advocating what we need. The narration was top knotch as well! We had a different narrator than previous books, and I enjoyed her storytelling. My only complaint is that the book ended very abuptly and I wanted a little bit more before we were cut off from Nadya's story, because her perspective is so valued and touching.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear is the 10th installment of Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series and it is one of my favorites.

McGuire's writing wraps you up in a familiar comfort and warmth then pulls you underneath where the drowned girls and boys go. The narration fits the story and the character so well. And in the end, you're left with the ache that these stories are known for, the what now? What next? After everything that happened, what do we do now?

Fanatic read. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the series or just enjoys solid writing.

the story of nayda- a russian girl adopted and a girl that never fit in. one day at the turtle pond turns into a magical adventure.

The Wayward Children series has such an important place in my heart, and with this latest adventure, that fact only solidified. The consistent world-building and explorations of what makes each of us lost and found again in the right place is fascinating and melancholy. I loved the narrator too!

I am always, always going to love this series. In the 10th installment Seanan McGuire has done it again. These books are enchanting and thematically strong, and the narrator was fantastic. The one downside is I prefer the books focusing on the entire cast at the school instead of the origin stories for each character (that being said, Seanan McGuire. Drop Kade’s book and my life. Is. YOURS) . I never get tired of these books- I think I could read them forever.

Turtle-iffic!! 4.5 stars.

Had to say going into this book I had slight reservations. The last two books were some of my favorite in the series and we were going in to follow Nadya which we had not seen since book 3 who we only briefly knew.
But never a disappointment. Seanan McGuire's captivating world building is amazing as always.
A great addition to the the series.

The only thing I would have liked was an epilogue. It is no secret that Nadya re-finds her door in the halls of the dead. I would love to see her return. Who was still there? How had timed passed, if it had?

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for an advanced audiobook for review.

Oh my heart! This book was beautiful and heartbreaking and heartwarming just like so many other books in this series. I am constantly impressed by the way that McGuire creates new and compelling world that fit these characters so perfectly. This is definitely one of my favorites.

I quickly fell in love with the magical otherwordly realm Nadia gets drawn into from the pond. Her story is sad but not necessarily helpless. I love her personality and outlook on life given that she isn't "whole" in the eyes of the world she's from. She gains strength and builds a life in the new world. Listening to this audiobook I was hopefully for a happy ending, but was absolutely devastated by the ending. I am not further intrigued by the author and may pick up other books in this series to see if they are written similarly. Overall I really enjoyed Adrift on Currents Clean and Clear.

When I first found out that we were getting Nadya's story I was a little confused. Nadya was a blip of a character at the beginning of the series, and we had spent so much time with Cora (who is also a Drowned Girl and comes from a water world) that I thought we would be getting her story. Nonetheless, I found Nadya's story to be an interesting one.

The only thing that I had remembered about Nadya was that she loved turtles and would always hang out by the turtle pond. So when I started this book I was surprised to see that she was born with half of her right arm. After being adopted by an American couple, Nadya is brought to Colorado from Russia to become the "perfect American daughter". As part of this process, Nadya is given a prosthetic arm. As someone who has loved her body, never felt insecure about her disability, and didn't understand how others couldn't see the same thing, Nadya was angry at the loss of autonomy over her own body (which I thought was a clever way to speak to what is currently happening to women's rights in our country). In trying to escape her situation, she finds the door Belyyreka and accidentally falls in.

Belyyreka is an entire world that is under a lake. The entire world is covered in water, but the water is of different weights (some water is so light that everyone can breathe normally without the need of gills) so some parts of the world feel more underwater than others. I had a very hard time trying to picture the actual world because the physics behind it was hard for me to understand (Nadya even claims that some of the adults might not understand it either but just go with it). We see giant turtles that become companions, we see ships that can travel above and below water, and there are talking animals. There was no real sense of danger or urgency that we've seen in some of the other worlds. Instead, this really just felt like a slice of life and we really got to see how everyone lives in this world. I think Belyyreka is one of my favorite worlds that we've seen so far.

Overall, I enjoyed this book but it didn't break into my top 3. I think it's a solid book in the series, but at the same time I kept thinking "Why are we getting this story?". There is no mention of the School for Wayward Children or any of the characters we've seen before so like "Along the Green Grass Fields" this book could be read as a standalone or a starting point to see if someone is interested in reading more in the series.

I really enjoyed reading about Nadya's story. Loved that we got to see her growing up and really get a feel for her character. Her origin in Russia, the harshness of her beginning with her mom giving her up for adoption because she was born with a missing arm, and living in an orphanage, which was tough because of the meager existence, but also clearly filled with mutual respect if not love. In contrast, her adoption and assimilation in the US, which was also tough in a different way, and her finding her door and her way into the magic and the World of Belyrreka. The World building was lush with detail - so much in such a short book. And like others have said - the ending gutted me too.

2 stars - and I want to give even less (but the audiobook is wonderfully recorded, so I am compromising).

Listen, I quite like this series, and Seanne McGuire's writing in general. But, I am also Ukrainian-Canadian, and there is absolutely ZERO excuse for any new fantasy books to be set in Russia. ZERO EXCUSES!

Writing or publishing books set in Russia, while it continues (for no reason other than Putin's greed and ambition) to invade and bomb the beautiful country of my ancestors. 42 million people are displaced or living in war-torn surroundings, 10's of thousands of children stolen to Russia and forced to live in a different language and told their culture is evil while they miss their real parents and families, entire cities bombed into ruins and dirt, pov's tortured to extremes, ... and you want to publish a book set in this dictator's land?!? That is paramount to agreeing with his politics and regime.

And no, I am not over exaggerating.

Had this audiobook been set in almost any other Slavic country, I would have given it 4-4.5 stars. This far into the unprovoked invasion, it is a choice to set it there, and deserves less than 1 star as a result. I am disgusted by this author and their original publishing firm to have breezed over the atrocities that Putin and Russia are currently committing and thinking it is okay to base a story (and later characters as having also come from) there.

And while I am absolutely grateful for my ongoing relationships with Netgalley and publishers like Macmillan Audio, I truly wish that this audiobook had come with a trigger warning. No profit is worth overlooking true evil, invasion upon a peaceful nation, and the justice owed all Ukrainian peoples everywhere. (I'm pretty sure that you can tell that this is my honest opinion).

I love all the Wayward Children series and this is the first time I have listened to one of the stories. The narrator really made all the characters come to life. I especially enjoyed how easily the narrator shifted between the Russian accent and the American Colorado accent. I’m ready to see if Barrie Kreinik has narrated any other of the books in this series. If so, I plan to listen to those as well. What a great experience and I recommend both the book and the audio version.

seanan mcguire is basically the goat at writing short novellas like this.

this installment introduces us to nadya, dumped at a russian orphanage by a mom who delivered her with one arm. after a few years of helping her fellow orphans spruce up and find homes to go to, nadya is adopted by one of those white, religious couples from america. this couple makes no true effort to know nadya, just mold her into their perfect child so that she can be shown off as a status symbol at their church.

at the orphanage, nadya found a turtle and nursed it back to health. perhaps that's why her door appears to her in the form of a turtle with 'be sure' carved into its shell.

nadya falls into a watery, swampy world. it's beautiful and liquid and replete with sentient turtles, some of home are partnered with the dozens of others who came into their world via doors. what we have here is a story about a girl who didn't ever really feel wanted, either because of her own identity or just because, finding a family and identity. it really dabbles in the short length of time that we're granted, the importance of doing what brings us joy. the ending was a big ouch.

anyway, i'll never not recommend this series. this wasn't my favorite book in the series, but a banger all the same.