History Literature / EveryHeartADoorway

* CloudCuckooLander: Nonsense worlds tend to attract people who have the potential to be this and turn them UpToEleven. Sumi is the most notable example.

* AdultFear: Not mentioned in the text explicitly, but the happy conclusion for any of the kids, to find the door to their world again, is one of these given that it involves Eleanor pretending they ran away from their family again.

* RomanticAsexual: Nancy is asexual and notes that she feels no sexual desire for anyone. She does note though that she isn't aromantic though and develops feelings for one of her classmates, a UsefulNotes/{{trans|gender}} boy named Kade Bronson.

* MagicMirror: Some worlds are gotten to by mirrors, an specific example is given of:

* MistakenForGranite: This is the trait that Nancy caries back from the Halls of the Dead. While there were ghosts there Nancy was one of the LivingStatues; living people who can hold themselves so still that the stillness spreads into their very cells so time itself stops.
** It's pointed out that this takes both a large amount of strength an a suspension of biological rules given how the human circulatory system works. Regardless even outside her Door Nancy can freeze so completely that people can walk feet from her without noticing. [[spoiler: Which is how she discovers Jill.]]
* NarniaTime: Time passes differently in some of the other worlds, which means that children who spend years on one side may only be missing for a few days or weeks in the real world. Averted with the Moors, however - Jack and Jill's five years there occurred in real time.

* YouCantGoHomeAgain: The chief source of angst, combined with StrangerInAFamiliarLand. Nancy and the other students (except Kade) desperately want to return to their otherworlds, and many believe that the rulers of said worlds are simply waiting before calling them back again. But some doors only open once. There are some aversions, however.

** Eleanor's door has always been open for her. Unfortunately she physically can't handle her world anymore; her adult mindset is unable to deal with the Nonsense nature of it and she was nearly driven insane when she got too old to keep hopping between worlds and didn't realize it. She's stated (only half-jokingly) that she's just waiting until she's old enough to start going senile in order to be able to survive going home again. Until then she'll continue doing everything she can for the girls at her school.

** [[spoiler: Jack could always return to the Moors. She simply had to choose whether to leave Jill behind, or change her so that the Master couldn't have her.]]

* BewareTheSillyOnes: Sumi went to a high Nonsense world--essentially, like Wonderland. She talks mainly in alliteration and behaves something like a hummingbird on speed, but when provoked, she can be brutal. This appears to be the case with a lot of high Nonsense worlds in general. In Sumi's case, she decided she liked Nancy and this ''automatically'' protected Nancy from hazing by the other students, because none of them wanted to mess with Sumi.

* RomanticAsexual: Nancy is asexual and notes that she feels no sexual desire for anyone. She does note though that she isn't aromantic though and develops feelings for one of her classmates, a {{trans|gender}} boy named Kade Bronson.

* {{Transgender}}: Kade is a trans boy. The faeries took him because they thought he was a girl - when the dying Goblin King sees his true self and declares him his ''prince'', he gets kicked back into the real world.

* {{Asexual}}: Nancy. She thought that was what drew her into the underworld, but soon found out that the dead are just as lusty as the living.

* RealityEnsues: The book looks at what happens if you took a kid (usually a girl) into another world for their formative childhood/adolescent years, taught them to play by the rules of that world, got them invested, and then sent them home to the "real" world with no warning and no say in the matter, to families who thought they were missing or dead. Most of them have no idea how to relate to their families or peer group, and are packed off, if they're very lucky, to Eleanor's boarding school; Jack outlines the alternatives, which are to spend the rest of their lives medicated into a stupor, or wind up on the streets.

NeedsWikiMagicLove

* AbusiveParents: It's strongly implied that a number of the students' parents are not actually very good parents at all. Nancy's parents are the nicest ones we encounter, and they are oblivious to their daughter's asexuality and take away her clothes of choice to force her to wear things that make her look more like their "little girl". [[CloudCuckooLander Sumi]] has childhood pictures of herself looking very sad, still, and meek. Kade's parents misgender him and refuse to take him back unless he presents as female according to their wishes. Jack and Jill's parents are implied to be the worst of all, and almost certainly contributed to one of their children becoming [[spoiler:a monster and a serial killer]] and the other becoming [[spoiler:a sororicidal mad scientist]]. Eleanor believes this may be a factor in what kids get taken: because they are abused into minimizing parts of themselves, the world they need calls all the more to them.

* HollywoodAcid: Subverted - Jack mentions that it will take an hour for [[spoiler:Loriel's]] flesh to completely dissolve from her bones.
** Invoked slightly with its greenish color. Most acids are clear.
** But possibly justified in-universe, given that Jack's world was based on old Hammer Horror films.

* BitchInSheepsClothing: Angela. She seems like a sweet girl who just misses her magical world full of rainbows, but as soon as she's under stress, she becomes incredibly cruel, blaming Nancy and Christopher for the murders just because they went to "creepy" worlds and slinging transphobic insults at Kade.

** Poor Kade actually gets this from both sides, ironically for the same reason. The fae ''thought'' they had a little girl, and were not best pleased when they realized they were wrong, and his parents have essentially disowned him unless he comes home as "Katie".

* WhoNamesTheirKidDude: By themselves, Jacqueline and Jillian are not odd names. But when you give them to twins and the nicknames are Jack and Jill...well.

* RomanticAsexal: Nancy is asexual and notes that she feels no sexual desire for anyone. She does note though that she isn't aromantic though and develops feelings for one of her classmates, a {{trans|gender}} boy named Kade Bronson.

* HumanResources: The killer at the school is collecting bits of the victims, specifically the best, strongest parts of them. Hands, eyes, brain... [[spoiler: The killer takes all these for a reason: she wants to construct a "skeleton key", a perfect girl who can be used to unlock the door to ''any'' world, allowing the killer to get back into hers...]]

* {{Transgender}}: Kade is a trans boy. The faeries took him because they thought he was a girl - when the Goblin King sees his true self and declares him his ''prince'', he gets kicked back into the real world.

* ShoutOut: A mention of talking scarecrows to ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'':

* SoBeautifulItsACurse: Seraphina. Nobody actually listens to what she says, they just respond positively because she's so pretty that they all want her to like them. (This effect seems to fade when as she's not in the room, since Kade can still insult her.) Don't feel ''too'' sorry for her, though--she's not a very nice person.