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

by T.J. Klune

[nannah]

My actual review is below the donation links, in case you’re interested in what I thought about The House in the Cerulean Sea.

I was over the three-quarters mark when I discovered T.J. Klune based this book on the Sixties Scoop, and I decided I might as well finish it and rate it 1 star when I was done.

The Sixties Scoop is the term referring to the “mass removal of Aboriginal children from their families into the child welfare system, in most cases without the consent of their families or bands” that happened in Canada beginning in the 1950s. These children were then placed into foster homes or residential schools and adopted out to middle-class white families. They faced cultural and literal genocide, as well as physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. The last (federally-funded) residential school closed in 1997.

Kas’s review explains why turning such a very traumatic part of a culture’s history into a fluffy, cozy fantasy is so disgusting much better than I ever could. But that should be self-explanatory.

Not only that, but the white heroes are made up of the master of one of these fictional foster homes and a caseworker in the system. And T.J. Klune changed the indigenous people into monsters/fairytale creatures and the actual Antichrist.

Do I actually believe he did so maliciously? No, I honestly don't. It’s not an excuse, though. He’s profiting off indigenous people's trauma.

So, instead of buying this book, maybe, here are some places you can donate:
The Indian Residential School Survivors Society
Kamloops Aboriginal Friendship Society
Legacy Of Hope Foundation
Orange Shirt Society
True North Aid

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Okay, now for the actual book review:

Content warnings:
- fatphobia (mostly internal)

Representation:
- the MC is plus sized and gay
- the love interest is gay
-one secondary character is Black, and another is Black-coded

Linus Baker, a 40-something-year-old caseworker at DICOMY (the Department of Magical Youth), spends his days making sure magical children in government-sanctioned orphanages are well taken care of before going home to his little house with his cat and his old records. He never knew what a quiet, lonely life he had before Extreme Uppity Management put him on a very classified case: an orphanage with a were-pomeranian, a gnome, a wyvern, a sprite, a jellyfish-like being, and the actual Antichrist. If they were the only mysteries the orphanage kept, the case would be hard enough, but it also comes with a caretaker who has secrets of his own. Linus was ordered to remain objective, but it becomes more and more difficult as the children (and their caretaker) become his new definition of home.

Many people see this as a comfort read, and although I can see why, the reasons above, the patronizing attitude of the narration, and the preachy nature of the entire thing ruined much of it for me. The relationship between Linus and Arthur, the caretaker, however, was very well done. It was sweet and had just the right amount of focus in this book, which has so many characters. There was even a scene with them near the end that made me tear up. Granted, I’m pretty emotional, but still.

But it’s difficult to believe this isn’t YA. I mean … yes, the protagonist is in his forties, but everything is so simplistic, from the writing to the voice to the humor. The narrative talks down to the readers, it tells us how to feel, it stuffs us full of its moral lessons till we mumble it back in our sleep. It’s also a very predictable story overall, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if done creatively. There are little and wonderful glimpses of imagination here and there (Zoe is a fantastic character, as are her conversations with Linus, and the descriptions of the sea and all it represents is lovely), but love beats all, and kindness defeats oppression. There’s nothing new here.

The heroes are ultimate Goods, and the bad guys are ultimate Bads, with no nuances in between. The character of Lucy -- Lucifer, get it? -- the Antichrist, almost, almost got there, but only almost. The children are all extremely sweet, with Hallmark-like inspirational quotes instead of bits of dialogue. I feel like T.J. Klune has never heard a child speak before. But then again, these kids are simply mouthpieces to carry the lessons the audience is meant to learn (even if I agree with them, I’m annoyed! I don’t want to be force fed).

And the lesson we got from this is one we’ve learned plenty of times before: prejudice is bad, kindness is good; don’t hate others for being or looking different. It’s also another issue I have, because kindness won’t magically solve oppression (is this a spoiler …?). There will always be oppression as long as there’s a class of people who want to remain in power in society. To do so, another group of people have to be subordinated, creating an oppressed underclass. In a YA book (and especially an MG), this could work, but in an adult novel it feels way too shallow.

Okay, just one more thing, and I promise I’ll be done. I can’t let the book’s fatphobia go unmentioned. Again, I’m sure the author didn’t mean for the fatphobia to be anything but Linus’s internal fatphobia, but there’s so much of it. The author places Linus in ridiculous situations just so that he can make his weight stand out or so someone can joke about it (i.e. the aisles between the desks at Linus’s workplace are so narrow he can’t walk them without knocking things off people’s desks), that it seems like these situations are supposed to be comic relief. Trying to resolve Linus Baker’s weight issues as “his love interest likes his appearance, so now he doesn’t even think about how he looks,” isn’t good enough.

Anyway, it’s apparent I didn’t enjoy this. If I didn’t know what the book was based on, I would probably have rated it 2.5 stars, rounded down.