The third Wayward Children book returns again to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children and revisits the character of Sumi, who we met in the first book. You don't have to read the second book in the series before this, but reading the first (Every Heart a Doorway) would definitely be helpful.

The story's told mainly from the point of view of Cora, an overweight girl who found a door into a water world where she was a powerful mermaid. The author seems to be trying very hard to create a positive representation of a fat character, but does this mainly by Cora constantly maintaining an internal monologue about herself being fat, being called fat, expecting to be called fat, etc etc while nobody else in the entire book ever actually mentions it. Meanwhile Cora doesn't actually get a lot of opportunities to demonstrate her actual good qualities - apart from learning she's a decent athlete we don't really get much of a feel for her personality and skills since she's so completely focused on body positivity messages. It's a bit puzzling why she's even there for the story at all, since she'd never met Sumi previously.

Anyway... lack of character development aside, the plot involves revisiting Nancy (from the first book) and traveling to Sumi's world which was Candyland, a nonsense world. Maybe appropriately for the locale, the plot feels fairly chaotic also. The characters are dragged around from world to world, conveniently able to travel anywhere they want to via a deus ex machina candy bracelet, and reacting to one situation after another without much free will or forethought.

It's a fun tour of some of the other worlds, and a nice follow up to the characters of Nancy and Sumi from book 1, but felt a little phoned in, tbh,