Every Heart a Doorway was my favorite book I read last year. It stuck with me long after I had finished it and since then I have attempted to recommend it to any person I think would like this quiet, dark and haunting fairy tale. Down Among the Sticks and Bones takes place before the events of Every Heart a Doorway, telling the story of Jack and Jill and how they found their doorway and then lost it again. You learn how they grew up, see the changes that the dark world they found themselves inside shaped them, see how their fractured and painful childhood colored the way they reacted to things in the Moors. But oddly, by the end of this little novella, I felt that I still wanted more, I wanted the book to be longer. 
 It's very strange, because Every Heart a Doorway was also a novella and certainly had more going on plot wise than Down Among the Sticks and Bones. We had more characters to learn, more backstories to flesh out, murder to solve, hearts to be broken and healed and broken again. But I never felt that I needed more out of that book when I finished the last page, like I do with Down Among the Sticks and Bones. The story is 3rd person omniscient but we still spend a large amount of time with Jack, seeing what she goes through. I understand everything that happened to Jill, her motivations, her pain, her evolution as a character, but I wanted to see more of it, like we did with Jack. Both sisters undergo immense change upon arriving in the Moors, but I feel like I've only scratched the surface of what happened in those 6 years between them. Like Every Heart a Doorway, there are secondary and tertiary characters who play a role in the plot but aren't vital, but I wanted more. I want to know more about Mary, or Dr. Bleak, or the love interest whose name escapes me. There is an immense history to this place that fascinated me but I'll never find out. 
 In the end, this book was still very good. I do not love it as much as I loved its predecessor, but that's not a black mark against it because, well, Every Heart a Doorway immediately jumped into my top ten books of all time and it's very difficult to follow up on that. McGuire's writing style is still perfect for a twisted fairy tale, I am still amazed with how she can convey so much with so few words. And she is allowed to write whatever length novel or novella she desires. I just wish that Jack and Jill's story had more time to grow and really show the reader what happened to change these two girls.