Review - Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

Beneath the Sugar Sky is the third book in Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. Like book one, this one starts at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children.

It's set after the events of Every Heart a Doorway, and there's a new student - Cora, who has returned from a Drowned world and ended up at the school like so many of the children who had returned unintentionally from their own fantastic worlds.

Things kick off when a girl - Rini - falls out of the sky. Rini claims to be the daughter of Sumi, and to have come from Confection.

Now the trouble there isn't that Rini has come from a Nonsense world, but that she's claiming to be Sumi's daughter because 1) Sumi was a student at the school and 2) Sumi is dead.

However, Cora, Kade, Christopher and Rini set out to figure out how to bring Sumi back, and also to ensure that Rini - who is slowly vanishing - exists at all.

Wayward Children is one of my favourite series, and Down Among the Sticks and Bones was my favourite read last year.

The books are all short - about 180 pages each - but they all pack so much in, and Beneath the Sugar Sky is no exception. Revisiting the school was fun, and some of the characters from Every Heart a Doorway.

It's short, but it packs a real emotional punch.