In an Absent Dream – Seanan McGuire

Katharine Lundy is a middle child, and even worse, the child of her school’s principal. She’s always been good at following rules, so she quickly becomes invisible, since no one wants to risk friendship with the principal’s daughter.

That’s when she first finds the door to the Goblin Market, where there are a few simple rules to live by, above all that you give Fair Value in all you do. And Lundy (which she’s known as there, because one of the other rules is to guard your true name) knows she’s found a home. But in fairness, the Goblin Market never holds the children that find it permanently – they must go home at least once before they decide to stay forever.

I have to say, this story definitely got me – I’m one of those rule followers, and seeing Lundy’s struggle to decide between a place where the rules are so clear, against a place where they are not, but there are people there that love her, was really relatable. I had to highlight the following passage:

“Let us speak, for a moment, on the matter of sisters. They can be enemies to fight or companions to lean upon; then can, at times, be strangers. They are not required to be friends, or to have involvement in one another’s lives, or to be anything more than strangers united by the circumstances of their birth. Still, there is a magic in the word “sister”, a magic which speaks of shared roots and hence shared branches, or a certain ease that is always to be pursued, if not always to be found.”