Every Heart a Doorway

**This page needs visual enhancement.**
You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page.

Every Heart a Doorway is a YA novel by Seanan McGuire, the first in her Wayward Children series. It was the winner of the 2016 Hugo Award, 2017 Nebula award, 2017 Locus Award, and received many nominations.

Nancy arrives at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, a few months fresh from a stint in the Underworld. She learns that she is one of dozens of children who found doors to magical worlds, that run on nonsense or logic. They're back in reality, and most are not handling it well. They want to return to those worlds. Nancy is no different. She wants to find her door, sooner rather than later.

Orientation will have to wait, however; dead bodies start appearing on school grounds, missing their limbs. Nancy is suspected, as is a mad scientist's apprentice named Jack. Miss West becomes frantic about protecting the children, by any means necessary. If they don't find the killer soon, the school could close, and Nancy may never find her door.

Tropes used in Every Heart a Doorway include:

Adult Fear:
- We see two sides of it with the premise of the doors: your child goes missing for a few months, or a few years even, and they come back utterly changed. Lucky ones have PTSD or a dose of Nonsense, and the not-so-lucky ones have been raised by vampires or served as Underworld servants. The stories of where they have been are too ridiculous to be the truth. Indeed, Christopher's parents logically think that the Skeleton Girl he met and wants to marry must be another runaway he met while missing, and are terrified to think that she must be dying on the streets.
- Then imagine you are the kid. You are this child who found a magical world, some scary, others nonsensical and some rational. Then you are thrust back into this reality, where you have become a stranger to your parents, who were once a distant memory. If you speak the truth, you'll likely be committed. Even if you can't explain, your parents will want the old you back, the cheerful child.
- Kade mentions that his parents disowned him for presenting as a boy when he returned from fairy land. They want "Katie" back, and nothing to do with Kade. Miss West took him in as an open-minded Cool Aunt and made Kade the heir to the school, as well as her Number Two after Lundy is murdered.
- When students are murdered at the school, Eleanor gives a meaningful funeral to the ones that are her wards, and hides the ones that have families by having Jack dissolve the bodies in acid, or have Nancy give them funerals. She knows it's not the right decision, but a death on school grounds with investigators would mean the school would be closed down.
The Blind Leading the Blind: This is one of Eleanor's problems, and Lundy's to a lesser extent. They are doing their best to manage the students, but have no resources to finding out how the magic works:
- While the school does become a safe space for the kids that found doors and had to leave those magical worlds, they don't know the precise means to either help the students return to those doors or find them. Not for lack of trying, but because each world seems tailored to the individual. Heck, Eleanor and Kade are related and it took her a few months to realize he was in a land of logic, not a nonsense place as she was. Kade mentions that Eleanor is the only person they know of whose door stayed open and visible well into adulthood, and she is the exception that proves the rule.
- Lundy is a trained psychologist and therapist. She leads the group sessions with patience and sternness, being rather cool to new students like Nancy. Yet Lundy is also haunted by the fact that thanks to her actions, she will regress in age and never be able to return to her realm of the fey. She also lacks the authority to actually help the students with their problems, given how self-absorbed some of them are.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Some of the girls who went to Nonsense or Fairy Lands become this. Their world was pretty on the outside but cruel on the inside, and they followed suit. Angela is probably the worst case of this coming from a land of rainbows, while Seraphina to her credit thanks Nancy and her friends for saving her from Jill.
- Jill is an odd case of this; everyone know that she was the thrall of a vampire in the moors, while Jack was apprenticed to a mad scientist. She was taught to play the part of the innocent waif, but is actually more murderous than Jack is, who has only killed and dissected living things for science. No one suspects her of being the killer, and she is perfectly willing to let her own sister take the fall. When Nancy, Kade and Jack bust her just as she's about to maim Seraphina, her pleasant mask falls off and she rants about how she needs to make the perfect "key", that is a perfect girl to open any door. Jack is forced to kill her to save Seraphina, while planning to resurrect her sister.
Bullying a Dragon: Those acclimated to the school know that Kade is more important than he looks, given he will inherit ownership and management when his aunt Eleanor retires as headmistress. Thus, Angela comes off as stupid and transphobic when she insults Kade by saying he's supposed to be a girl after he defends Nancy and Jack. And she says it in front of Miss West, his aunt, without realizing that Miss West was in earshot. We don't hear of her punishment, but Eleanor gives her a stern talking-to in the morning.
Cool Aunt: Miss West is revealed to be this for Kade. When his parents disowned him for coming out of the closet, Eleanor took him in and made Kade the relative who will eventually inherit the school. Kade says that she's his real family, even if she went to a Nonsense world and didn't understand that he came from a Logic world for a few months. He becomes her Number Two after Jill kills Lundy.
Dark Is Not Evil: Ultimately, the Lord of the Underworld is proven to be a Reasonable Authority Figure when making Nancy return to the real world so that she knows what it means to live with him permanently, and Miss West believes this for any of the kids that came from a door that led to a conventional horror or science fiction setting. Kade says that the general belief is that kids find these doors because something is lacking in their life; in his case, it was the realization that he was a boy. Nancy's case could be that she is asexual but not aromantic, and she didn't fit into the neat little boxes that her parents expected. She's not someone who likes to go with the flow and move through life; standing still in the Halls of the Dead suited her temperament. Indeed, Nancy realizes that she is sure she wants to return, that the Halls of the Dead open a door for her.
Do Wrong Right: This is why Jack maintains that she's not cutting up dead bodies for their organs. The killer is super sloppy, leaving the bodies out for the students and teachers to find. She was trained to always hide bodies, and be precise with any organ donation. Indeed, when accused of taking Lorelei's eyes, Jack has to point out that she may have a lab, but not a full research facility for ophthalmology or optometry. She would wait until a bioengineering firm hired her, and used their resources to keep her out of trouble. We find out Jack was right; Jill, her twin sister, was a sloppy killer when under servitude of a vampire, and it was her killing someone and being indiscreet that led to an angry mob going after her.
Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Downplayed with Jack, who has done mad scientist deeds like involuntary organ donations For Science! under her mentor Dr. Bleak's tutelage. She maintains, however, that everything was pragmatic and practical. Jack is also shocked and betrayed when learning that Jill was the one killing students to rebuild their door, and also attacked her sister to keep her from meddling. While she knew Jill was unstable, and got them exiled in the first place, she hoped to find a third option that would allow them to return together.
Honor Before Reason:
- This is why Loriel returned to the real world. The spider queen she met offered to make her princess of this Web Kingdom, but Loriel said she had to ask her parents first, despite knowing that her door may not reappear. What's tragic is the spider queen put it in a corner of Loriel's bedroom and kept it open at a great cost; and Loriel searched for two years before she was murdered. When the spider queen realizes Lorelei would not be able to return home, she mourns for a year.
- Jack reveals that she could have returned to her door at any time, if she either murdered Jill who was the cause of their exile, or left her behind in the real world. Obviously she refused to do the first, until she caught Jill in the act of trying to murder another innocent student, and doing the second option would be unthinkable. Jill is murderous and vain and selfish, but she's family. Once Jack plunges scissors into Jill's back, their door opens, and she carries her sister's body into the moors hoping to resurrect her.
Mayfly-December Romance: This trope is discussed, and it's shown that for most of the land's adults who take in the children and develop a romantic bond, they take pains to avoid the squicky aspects of this trope. Spending time in high Nonsense and logical fairy lands will slow down your aging, as Kade looks like a teen when he's actually in his twenties and emphasizes that no one manipulated him that way even if they exiled him for being the wrong gender. Christopher says that the Skeleton Girl gave him a flute that would keep him young and healthy, so that they could stay together. The squicky version, however, is shown with Jill and her vampire master; he planned to turn her when she was seventeen but kept her as a ward since the girls were six, torturing and murdering any children who befriended her. Jack is blunt when saying that the master was grooming Jill to be a perfectly controllable lover, but the other option was Dr. Bleak whose relationship with Jack was mentor-to-student and purely parental.
Only Sane Man: Kade out of all the students is the best-adjusted of the kids who haven't or never will find their doors. He helps them do clothing swaps when their parents meddle with their wardrobes, gives them a basic introduction if orientation is no help, and is matter-of-fact about the truth that even if he found his door, the fairy world would not accept him back because they only take girls and realized after the first Goblin King died that he was a boy when he was labeled an heir king. It's also revealed that he's in his twenties and looks like a teenager, owing to his time in a fairy land. So he's going to run the school when his aunt retires, in the hopes that he can help other kids either find their doors or some sort of peace with their lives.
Sadistic Choice: Kade mentions that Miss West wants to help students get into the mindset to either find their door or have healthier coping mechanisms to deal with life. There is no science or set practice for a door to open consistently, so you may have one chance and that's it. But what if you want to say goodbye to this reality? Worse, what if the price is too high to return?
- Miss West is one of the lucky ones; her door to a Nonsense Land stays open, allowing her to traverse between worlds so as to not cause her family grief. The problem is that the older she gets, the more logical she becomes, and thus the less familiar her Nonsense Land becomes. She also knows that one day it may close forever, locking her out of that paradise. When students start being killed and there seems to be no pattern, Miss West evacuates some of the Nonsense students through her door, knowing that it may be the closest way to home-- and safety-- that they have and that the door may close after she does that.
- Jack reveals coolly that her conditions for returning would be either kill her sister Jill, or leave her behind. She refused to do either for Jill's sake but is forced to stab Jill to save Seraphina. This killing satisfies the condition, and her door opens. Realizing that this was an opportunity she could not refuse, Jack carries Jill's body into the moors, bidding a sincere and saddened farewell to Nancy and Kade. She thanks them for being her friends.
- Nancy knows that her parents love her, but they don't understand her and she can't forgive them for that. When winter holidays emerge, she thinks about the fact that she could return to that life, and realizes it's not what she wants after reading a note that Sumi left before she died. She is sure, and her door emerges per the Lord of the Underworld's promise that she could return once she knew for certain. Nancy takes her chance, regretting that doing this means she can't say goodbye to Kade or her other friends.
- Kade and Eleanor also reveal that there is an alternate school where you can go, if you don't want to find your door or have given up hope. It's a place that is meant to make you forget, so you can eventually assume a normal life. Eleanor says that she can't forbid the students from transferring there, but she considers it the worst possible option, even compared to Kade mentioning that if not for his aunt, most of the students would be homeless or doped up on antipsychotics to forget these wild "dreams" of magical worlds. Where the Drowned Girls Go shows the details, and it's not pretty.