Waiting on Wednesday: Every Heart a Doorway

I know it's Thursday. But lots of you do the Waiting on Wednesday meme, and I just ran into a book that I am now desperate to read, and I couldn't wait until next Wednesday to tell you about it. (And Waiting on Thursday just doesn't sound the same.)

Look at that cover, that gorgeous, gorgeous cover. And the title! Squeezes my insides. But the premise is the kicker:

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere… else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced… they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world. But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of things.

I am a quivering mass of desperate need for this book. Why is it not April yet?

Oh, and Tor has an excerpt from it, in case you needed more convincing: Every Heart a Doorway. Here are a couple of my favourite lines:

There was still something unfinished around her eyes; she wasn’t done yet. She was a story, not an epilogue.

“Because hope is a knife that can cut through the foundations of the world,” said Sumi. Her voice was suddenly crystalline and clear, with none of her prior whimsy. She looked at Nancy with calm, steady eyes. “Hope hurts. That’s what you need to learn, and fast, if you don’t want it to cut you open from the inside out. Hope is bad. Hope means you keep on holding to things that won’t ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there’s nothing left. Ely-Eleanor is always saying ‘don’t use this word’ and ‘don’t use that word,’ but she never bans the ones that are really bad. She never bans hope.”