Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Narrator: Barrie Kreinik
Series: Wayward Children #10
Published by MacMillan Audio on January 9, 2024
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Length: 4 hours, 8 minutes
Format: Audiobook
Source: NetGalley
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Nadya never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she'd been missing from birth.
It was cumbersome; it was uncomfortable; it was wrong. It wasn't her.
Frustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyrreka, the Land Beneath the Lake--and found herself in a world of water, filled with child-eating amphibians, majestic giant turtles, and impossible ships that sailed as happily beneath the surface as on top. In Belyrreka, she found herself understood for who she a Drowned Girl, who had made her way to her real home, accepted by the river and its people.
The Wayward Children series a collection of novellas surrounding kids who didn’t quite fit into their worlds or their families that at some point in time go through a door to another world. But the thing about doors is sometimes they appear again when you aren’t paying attention and you go through them again. When that happens you may end up at the School for Wayward Children where you wait with others, hoping to find your door home again.
Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear is one such story. Nadya was orphaned write after her birth and was great at helping to take care of all the children at the orphanage where she lived. She didn’t mind she was missing half an arm. She got along just fine without it and even if it bothered some it didn’t bother her. She was adopted by an American Christian couple and came to live her life in America. It was there she learned not everyone saw her arm the same way.
Nadya found the door when she was sad about the family who adopted her and wanted her to wear a prosthetic arm. She never doubted herself until that day and while looking at the turtles she so loved to visit she ended up in a water world. She spent almost a decade there, with a tortoise to call her own and a boy who became her husband. This is the story of those adventures and the wonderful times she had exploring the world of Belyrreka until a day that brought her back.
I really liked Nadya and her kind heart and way of taking care of those around her. Seanan McGuire does such a great job with all the worlds people end up in and how interesting and different they are from one another. She is incredibly imaginative bringing the world and characters in it to life in a short period of time. I knew Nadya would end back up in our world since I saw her at the school and we get a brief introduction to her. But I was sad all the same when she ended up on this side of the door again.
As most of these books, they are self contained stories that don’t have to be read in order to understand what is happening, however it does help. I still suggest reading them in order to get the full impact.
Narration:
Barrie Kreinik did really well at capturing the atmosphere of the story. Her Russian accent for Nadya and some of the river folk in Belyrreka worked really well. I enjoyed her performance and how well she was able to make me care for Nadya so much in just a short period of time.
Performance: ★★★★
Character Separation: ★★★★★
Diction: ★★★★
Pacing/Flow: ★★★★
Sound Effects: limited at the introduction
Listen to a clip: HERE
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I enjoyed this too, and she always has a nice message inserted into her stories.
I would agree, this one had some great messaging about being okay with not looking like everyone else. I really liked that she tackled someone with a physical birth defect.
I will be listening to this one. As you know, this author is a favorite of mine. Lovely review!
I enjoy most of her books. She is very creative and has a lot of content in the form of short stories on her website that I love. For those of us that want a deeper connection to a world and some of the side characters in it.
All this author’s books sound so good, I really will read them one of these days! Great review!
If you like Urban Fantasy she has a lot of great different books/series out there. Plus a lot of free content on her website with short stories of characters in her series, so you can always check out a few of those to see if you like her.
Love that you can read these in any order.
That part is nice. I had seen Nayda in a different book, so I knew she eventually ends up at the school but I could have read this book and nothing else and understood the series just fine.