 Hey guys it's Sam and this is my spoiler for your review for Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Shauna McGuire. This book was sent to me by Tor for review consideration but this book is already out. It came out back in June. This is the second book in the Every Heart A Doorway series. I think it's called like the Lost, the Wayward Children series. It wasn't printed anywhere on here. So this is the second book in the Wayward Children series. It's going to so far be a trilogy but she has plans for other books if these books continue to do well. So I'm reviewing this so that all of you read this because this series needs to do well because I need like 18 books in this world. Down Among the Sticks and Bones follows two of the characters that we meet in Every Heart A Doorway and this is their story before they get to the events of Every Heart A Doorway in the world that they went into. So this series is about kids that go into portal fantasy worlds so that walk through a door, a cabinet, a magical forest and end up in another world. Those kinds of stories that we're so used to seeing. So it follows these characters either in their world or when they come back and Every Heart A Doorway is about when they come back and they go to this like boarding school because they can't deal with being back in the normal world. So this is following two of the characters that were probably arguably fan favorites from that first book and their world and as you can tell from the creepy cover their world is the Moors and it's a very dark scary horror-esque world and so interesting, very Halloween, very spoopy. So first off I'm going to talk about the world building. I love this world. It's so like creepy but not in like a scary way because I can't read like horror scary stuff but it's like bordering on that. There's definitely some like gore elements and it very much feels like some of the characters or like archetypes that you're used to seeing in a lot of those like horror like gothic horror stories. So it is like a gothic horror world so you have like the like vampires and like mad scientists kind of thing but it's taking a lot of those tropes and spinning them on their heads and making them unique and different and it's in a world that is just so eerie and so like weird and everything in this book is just it fits that so well and I can't wait to see more of these portal worlds because they're my favorite. So next I'm going to talk about the characters. The characters that this follows are Jack and Jill. They are two twins who again were in the first book in the series and they have a life that's been defined by their parents. This book really focuses on bad parenting kind of and making sure that your kids are able to have their own identities that you don't choose identities for them and how catastrophic that can be if you put kids into a box from the time that they're born and all this stuff about like even gender and masculinity and femininity and androgyny all this stuff so good. Like within the first chapter I was already like I love this because of everything that it was saying about that and it's such a short book. These are novellas so they aren't very long but for that kind of theme to really be so prevalent was so nice and I just loved it. So between that and then getting the creepy world and how you see how everything plays out with them because of how they were brought up and forced to be so cool. Jack is my favorite of the two characters but obviously Jack is nothing without Jill. Not that she's nothing without Jill but it's just like the juxtaposition between them is what's so interesting and I loved that. I will also say that Jack is a lady who loves other ladies so you do have that element within here. There is a little bit of a warning if you don't like any kind of tumultuousness within that or possible sad endings. I wouldn't say that this is a for sure sad ending because there's hints and stuff but possible sad endings with queer relationships. Then you might not want to read this but I still think it was good and worth it and that there's hints of things to come so I consider it a thumbs up. Lastly I want to talk about the plot. I overall really enjoyed this. This is a one sitting read. These novellas are one sitting reads but I will say that I do think Seanan kind of struggles with the second parts of her books. I feel like they are a little more rushed. Maybe it is because of the shortness of the stories. I do feel like these books could be longer. I would willingly gladly have them be longer but they're not sadly so I do feel like the endings do get kind of rushed and a lot of things get crammed into the end of these books between the two that I've read of hers so that's my only real complaint about this but I really enjoyed it and I wish we could just see more of them. I want more of these worlds. I want more of Jack and Jill. I want more of everything. I love this whole setting. So please please please read the Rayward Children series. They're so good. You can read them in one sitting. They're amazing and I want all the worlds all the worlds. I gave this one five out of five stars. So comment below and let me know what you thought of Down Among the Sticks and Bones. Thank you all for watching and I'll see you all again soon. Bye.