Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire

This is book nine in the Wayward Children Series, a series of books about children who have found portals into alternate worlds that can be the stuff of nightmares or dreams, depending on the child. 

A good thing about this series is that you could probably read the books out of order, since they deal with different children and worlds. But there are recurring characters and themes throughout, which might be lost by going out of order.

This book is about Antsy, who has a knack for finding lost things, which, as you can imagine, may include doors to secret worlds. Antsy finds herself and a group of friends, including a land-bound mermaid, a boy from a skeleton world, and a girl who died in a previous book, on a quest. They jump from door to door in order to avoid the wrath of Sarafina, a student with the ability to make people do anything for her. 

Eventually they land in Antsy's world, where lost things go. It's a nexus world, with a store for travelers. She worked at the Store of Lost Things, where people can open a multitude of doors and explore different worlds. In her case, Antsy used the doors for trips to buy supplies or opened doors for her employer to make visits to other worlds. Antsy eventually learned with every door opened, there is a cost, and she wants to hold the store owner accountable for not telling kids what that cost is.

This lore about the doors is interesting because it applies to all the books. We also get to see multiple worlds, including Prism, which is Cade's world, that he doesn't like to talk about (although I don't think this book does much to help in that understanding). While this is a great overall book for the series, with a lot of relevant information, I found it meandering in execution.

Once again, I am torn about these books. I know I'm not their target audience, as the series skews younger. But I appreciate the concept. The books are so short, however, you don't get a lot of world-building. And they deal with heavy topics like death, sexuality, and belonging in such short packages, that sometimes I feel it's not enough to really dig in. But I also am not engaged enough to want a longer book. I keep picking them up thinking, "this will be the one I truly love" and it hasn't happened yet. But I think they're great for junior high or high schoolers because they are so short and sweet, but still heavily packed with relevant topics.

So while I keep feeling meh about these books, there's something that keeps me coming back because they are so creative, if not fully fleshed out.