I’m just going to say it. If I keep reading this series I am going to need a bigger budget for therapy. And tissues. 

McGuire once again dives in and shines a light on international adoption and the complex emotions that come with it. We get to see Nadya’s origin story begin in Russia, born to a teenage mother and abandoned at the hospital. It would be the first of many abandonments for her. 

From the orphanage to Colorado, we see and understand how she sees herself and how her adoptive parents felt the world see her. And really, her American parents don’t actually see her as a whole person. It’s partly due to the absence of her arm and partly because they don’t yet understand being a parent isn’t having a child as a possession. Nadya is now subject to complex interactions that are inflicted on her, not conversations with her in which she’s able to voice her needs and decisions. 

After having a prosthetic arm forced upon her, it isn’t long before she finds herself through a doorway into a drowned world. Nadya’s story is about strength. The strength to accept herself and her world as she is.