The House in the Cerulean Sea (The House in the Cerulean Sea, #1)

by T.J. Klune

[lessthelonely]

4/5 stars.

I must say, after having DNFed a book that was, to be honest, really boring me, it was nice to grab a book that I immediately realized I was going to like. I also needed the distraction as my life has had quite a few hiccups lately, but that’s neither here nor there. I noticed, from the very first page, that this book was going to a be comforting book, and I wasn’t wrong.

This was my first book by T. J. Klune but it’s not going to be the only one, not only because I enjoyed this one but because I bought another book by him along with this one, this is just the first one I have read. Either way, this book has quite a few tropes that I feel have a very known reputation: found family, adoptive father that is more of a father than anyone else, et cetera.

Let’s start with the positives, because I feel like they vastly outweigh the negatives: the writing never felt like it was doing too much. It’s hard to write a book where you just keep reading and though you notice quite a lot of fun moments and quotes and things that are memorable, you don’t even notice the pages going by. This is obviously a good sign, but I must also say that the balance between dialogue and narration was interesting. Narration didn’t feel bloated with descriptions for the hell of it, dialogue read as actual people talking, which is great.

On another hand, I was surprised with just how much depth the author managed to inject into each and every character - the adults are obvious suspects and I was expecting this, since the synopsis mentions a romance between the adults -, but, at the same time, I wasn't expecting to connect and care so much for the kids, yet I did.

I can clearly remember something about each and every kid, though it’s obvious some are way more developed than others. Not going to lie, I got Good Omens vibes from the synopsis, which is a book I tried to read (in my main language, nonetheless!) and DNFed after a third of it. Now that I mentioned it, I can see it looking as me from the corner of my eye in my office. Funny.

Let’s move on to the two negatives, first off, the hardest shortcoming to explain: this book was very much streamlined. I should get some sort of term for this, but a thing that tends to dampen my enjoyment of books is when it’s clear a plot twist has just happened, I understand it, I get the vibe, I get this is a big moment in the book... But my reaction is to just carry on. Oh, this is happening, now, OK. Like, it doesn’t make me think back on what I read and how it makes sense, it doesn’t shock me or make me go “WOW”... It happens. And my reaction is next to non-existent. Granted, I don’t think the plot twist was meant to be such a big deal, but still.

The other negative is just the romance. Now, did I enjoy the romance? Yes. But when you advertise a book’s romance I expect it to be top-tier. Linus and Arthur are definitely cute together, but a lot of interactions seems to happen off-page, which isn’t all that fun in my opinion, not when you’re boasting “romance” on the synopsis. That’s really all there is to it: I wish I’d gotten more, and I don’t think adding a 100 more pages would’ve been so bad if that was the case.

Either way, I consider this book a win and it basically pulled me out of a little reading slump, so I thank it for that alone.