Audiobook Review - Beneath The Sugar Sky

• Title And Author: Beneath The Sugar Sky by Senan McGuire
• Publisher: MacMillian Audio
• Physical, eBook or Audiobook: Audiobook
• Bought, Borrowed or Gifted: Bought
• Length: 176 Pages or 4 Hours 11 Minutes

I have been dodging listening to this instalment of the Wayward Children series, even though it has been calling me for quite some time. Main excuse I had was I didn't want to spend so much money on an audiobook which was just over 4 hours long. But when I decided that I might - MIGHT - cancel my Audible account, I knew that I would use one of my credits on this. Then I held back because I wanted to listen during the Bookemon Readathon I decided to take part in throughout May. 

With this being a direct sequel to Every Heart A Doorway (both Down Among the Sticks and Bones and In An Absent Dream being prequels), Beneath The Sugar Sky follows a character called Rini who literally fell out of the sky and splashed into a pond of Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, desperate to find her mother, Sumi. But Sumi is dead. She was murder in Every Heart's A Doorway, and now, Rini's reality is changing and slowly, she is being wiped out of existence. 

Sumi must come back to life, because Reality is going to notice that a girl that shouldn't exist is existing. It's a good thing that Rini has landed in a school where the student body is well equipped for a quest...

Ok... so... where the hell do I start with this?

Audiobook Review - In An Absent Dream

• Title And Author: In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
• Publisher: MacMillian Audio
• Physical, eBook or Audiobook: Audiobook
• Bought, Borrowed or Gifted: Bought
• Length: 208 Pages and 4 hours 57 minutes

Back in 2017, I finally got myself round to reading the first novella within the Wayward Children series, Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire. And I enjoyed it. Yes, it wasn’t perfect with some of the things it suggested or how it handle the murder mystery element of that plot (I figured out who was behind the deed and why they were doing it quite quickly!), but I did like reading about this world and the idea of “What happens to children to go to magical worlds like Alice in Wonderland when they come back? What trauma do they go through?” 

I have kept my eye of the series and, while I have always leaned more towards Behind the Sugar Sky more then Down Among the Sticks and Bones, I have always found one excuse or another not to return to this world. But when I discovered I had a ton of credits on Audible and that In An Absent Dream was out the following day (I listened to a good chuck on this on the day of release), I ordered it and dived straight in. 

In this, the fourth installment of the Wayward Children, we have a prequel set in the 1960s. This followed a story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who follows the rules, would rather study, read and dream than become a respectable housewife. But one day, on the last day on school before summer holiday, Lundy fins a doorway. A doorway that leads her to a world founded in logic and reason, the goblin market where fair value rules. Lundy finally finds a place to be herself, but soon, she will have to make a decision about what world she should belong in, she makes a bargain. A bargain that will, in no way, be fair value to anyone…