User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I think these days more than ever, with a pandemic ravaging every corner of the world, I understand more keenly how absolutely necessary it is to find the escape hatch in reality, to seek out a pleasant corner and while away the hours inside a story. And there is no better one I can think of than this one.
The House in the Cerulean Sea is a nonstop pleasure. It flooded every corner of my mind with delight and warmth and made me feel reassured and nourished in channels of my heart which had stood scraped dry for weeks. It’s a feeling I wish I could put in a bottle to carry it with me through the dark.
The novel's premise is as simple as it is ripe with comedic potential. Caseworker Linus Baker of the Department in Charge of Magical Youths (DICOMY) has the distinct appearance of someone with a stick up his ass. His job is like a millstone, all weight and no warmth: investigate orphanages that house magical children, write a report that encourages either the continuation or discontinuation of these establishments, and justify it all within the uncompromising parameters of
fairness. See, Linus Baker walks through life like a wound-up clock ticking dutifully through the seconds: he has a routine, rules that he follows with a stony rigidity, and a comfort zone that he’s sealed himself inside of. But when Linus is assigned to investigate an island orphanage for magical children deemed especially dangerous, his world unlocks.
There is something vital and wondrous about Arthur and the magical children that came to him with tragedies already packed in their suitcases, and Linus Baker is more or less the human opposite of vitality and wonder. During his stay in the house in the Cerulean sea, Linus becomes acutely, achingly aware of the empty place at his center, and starts wondering at the grim march of the life he’d lived before. At the beliefs he’d held close to his chest, and the rules he’d dutifully obeyed but never looked directly in the eyes. At the life that once seemed so perfectly fine, but which now pinches like tight shoes.
**
TJ Klune wears his heart on his sleeve, and
The House in the Cerulean Sea is that much better for it. The novel is lively, exquisitely crafted and wildly propulsive. It brims and bubbles with quirkiness and playful detail, and the dialogue positively fizzes.
But it’s the cast of tenderly realized characters that carries the day.There is something undeniably unconditional about the relationships here, and it stirred my heart. Klune’s cast of characters is achingly compelling. Arthur’s lightness of heart is infectious: he is a study in kindness, made of such a steadfast and dependable fiber, despite the sadness that haunts his eyes. His magical children are every inch as erratic and colorful as Linus is restrained and monochromatic, and together they made something like the word “family”, disappearing into one another like partly shuffled cards, and rubbing their rough edges smooth against each other. I can’t tell you how much I relish stories that don’t believe that blood makes a family, but that kin is the circle you create, hands held tight. Linus, Arthur and the kids could not have been more different, but they all formed the same desperate plea in their minds: to be seen, to be loved, to reach and to be reached for. And as they all moved, tremulously, one step along the road between unknown and familiar, I found myself full of wishes for them—for that house in the Cerulean sea, away from the gaze of malice and a happily-ever-after.
But as entertaining and unrelentingly fun
The House in the Cerulean Sea is, it is hard to forget that it’s also calmly, intelligently damning, and full of tough questions about difference, prejudice and complacency. The novel delicately carves out the myriad ways in which we see and don’t see our own world and the people around us. It questions our tendency to categorize people to make them easier to understand, to slip into neatly received misconceptions and stereotypes to avoid the discomfort of confronting our own ignorance, our shame. But however grim the novel’s resonance with the real world is, The House in the Cerulean Sea is always leavened with hope. It knows hate, but believes in people too. It is, at its core, a joyful celebration of the nondiscriminatory nature of love that thoughtfully explores not only its rewards but its risks too, and a reminder of the extraordinary power of a gift as simple as kindness.
All in all, The House in the Cerulean Sea is a cracking, charming novel, and I find myself hoping for a sequel. In fact, knowing this is a standalone, and there are no more books to come in this wonderful world is the novel’s only disappointment.
Rating: really liked it
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
I'll be honest, I read it, and I loved it, writing was great and everything. Then months after reading it I discovered that his book was inspired by Canada's Sixties Scoop.
"It remained fuzzy until I stumbled across the Sixties Scoop, something I’d never heard of before, something I’d never been taught in school (I’m American, by the way). In Canada, beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the 1980s, indigenous children were taken from their homes and families and placed into government-sanctioned facilities, such as residential schools. The goal was for primarily white, middle-class families across Canada, the US, and even Europe—to adopt these children. It’s estimated that over 20,000 indigenous children were taken, and it wasn’t until 2017 that the families of those affected reached a financial settlement with the Canadian government totaling over eight hundred million dollars."Even this description of residential schools is sugarcoating it. He bedazzled and turned into fantasy the trauma of children who were forcibly separated from their families in a cultural genocide(that involved torture, SA, and murder... so you know part of an actual genocide), and then acted like it was all figured out after a settlement. Literally profiting off of missing and undocumented children, and people who are STILL living with the trauma of residential schools, who are still living like second class citizens in THEIR country due to the impact of those schools(which ran well until the mid 90's) along with so many other atrocities committed against them over the past hundreds of years. Alsoooooooo from a podcast...
“I didn’t want to co-opt, you know, a history that wasn’t mine. I’m a cis white dude, so I can’t ever really go through something like what those children had to go through.
So I sat down and I was like, I’m just going to write this as a fantasy.”I'm sorry, what? Can you imagine if someone said this EXACT same thing but with using the holocaust, or slavery in America? "You know as a cis white dude I don't understand what being a slave or being Black in America is like, but if I turn that story into a whimsical, humorous, fantasy, I think I can sort of maybe try"
And the icing on the cake, once you realise the source material is. The message is essentially "This place isn't so bad, they just needed to find someone in the system who cared about them... Also while they are still ~*~different~*~ they are still kids who deserve love". Stop it.
I honestly wish white folk would stop using BIPOC trauma as a springboard for their ideas.
ETA: Seeing as this is getting some traction I thought I would add some links of places you can donate to support survivors(all these links I originally found through lisa.beading on Instagram). Educate yourself and use your voices to amplify their stories, not twist and sugarcoat it into whatever this book wasThe Indian Residential School Survivors Society
Legacy Of Hope Foundation
Kamloops Aboriginal Friendship Society
ETA 2 I truly hope if TJ reads this, he understand why what he did was so problematic, and educates himself. In part of that podcast episode I posted he says
"We have to speak up for those that can’t speak for themselves. And that’s kind of the theme of the whole book is, is to raise your voice for those who don’t have one." You took someone elses story, and changed it to something more "palatable". You took their voices away. If this really struck a chord with you, you're a talented writer, you could have easily written something else, and still used your platform to elevate and amplify Indigenous voices. Something you can still do, if you choose to.
Rating: really liked it
Hands down. This is one of the best things I’ve read this year! I LOVED THIS BOOK SO MUCH!
I fell for the world building, creative-crazy-unique ideas, character development! This is not only a regular YA fantasy novel. This book is about acceptance, caring, opening your heart and soul! As a summary: this book is about unconditional love and respecting differences of others.
It’s a sweet, smart, entertaining and also heartwarming story hooks you from the first chapter, makes you giggle, smile, sigh.
Let’s take a quick look of the storyline and the characters:
Our narrator Linus Baker is, 40 years old,a quiet, simple, lonely man works as a caseworker at Department in Charge of Magical Youth, living a simple, quiet, lonely life, always following rules, doing what the government orders.
He always stays objective when he examines the orphanages filled with the kids who have supernatural abilities. He knows they’re different and he respects that. He never treats unfair and makes those children feel inferior. He treats them as equal as the normal kids but he never gets close or connects with them either.
He only does his job at the end of the day, going back his lonely house for arguing his noisy neighbor who tries to matchmake him with his accountant relative, playing music and talking with his grumpy cat which is his only real friend in this world.
But when he is summoned by Extremely Upper Management for an urgent meeting, he realizes his simple life will change forever.
Management hires him for a top secret mission: they want him to investigate Marysas Island Orphanage where six extremely dangerous kids reside: a gnome, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, a sprite and an baby Lucy Morningstar!
Thankfully he doesn’t learn the identities of the kids because he may have passed out during the meeting with his superiors!
And another fact kept secret from him: one of the children may have enough power to bring the “End of the Days”! ( You don’t have to guess which one is! Yes, the one with red eyes whose future self open a night club in LA!!)
He can’t reject the offer for the future of his job. He will spend one month in the island and he will not examine the well beings of the children but he will also investigate the master Arthur Parnassus and the way of doing his job.
He packs his bag and rides on his scheduled train accompanied by his cat. As soon as he reaches to the island, he realizes those kids are powerful, peculiar, different but they’re still kids. They are still looking for love, compassion. They are still needed to be taken care, educated, nurtured, healed. And their master enigmatic and also charming Arthur can connect with them. He’s doing an amazing job and kids love him, too.
For the first time, Linus breaks his all rules, empathizing with these kids, opening his heart to them. And for the first time he’s not alone or he doesn’t have to live quite, simple, lonely life when he opens his heart and soul to unconditional love!
But of course his decision will bring out different consequences and risks into his life.
Overall: I loved everything about this beautiful, remarkable, extraordinary story. No more words. Borrowing the entire galaxy stars and giving to this book!
Rating: really liked it
An orphanage for magical children. An impossible romance between two gentle, caring men who live worlds apart. A shadowy bureaucracy that wants to keep magical children "safe" and away from the eyes of the general public. The power of found family and kindness against prejudice and fear.
Mix these elements, bake until sweet golden brown, take out of the oven and enjoy fresh and hot with your best friends . . . That is the taste of T. J. Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea. Our hero Linus Baker would never consider himself a hero. He is a good man being slowly drained of life by his job as an inspector for DICOMY (Department in Charge of Magical Youth). He visits orphanages for magical children and inspects these places to recommend whether or not they should remain open. He truly cares for the well-being of the children, but he can't get attached. He stays at each orphanage only long enough to make his report, then he is off on his next assignment. What happens to the children when he leaves? What will happen to them when they grow up and face a harsh world that sees them as 'freaks'? Linus doesn't know. He has to keep his head down, do his job, and trust that Extremely Upper Management knows what they are doing. He can't let his heart be broken by the various banshees, dryads, fairies, werewolves and other magical children he meets during his inspections, many of whom have gone from foster home to foster home and suffered untold years of abuse just for being who they are.
But then Extremely Upper Management sends Linus on a special mission that is top secret: He is to spend one month evaluating the Marsyas Island Orphanage, run by Arthur Parnassus, and decide whether it should remain open. This is no ordinary magical home. The children there are special, terrifyingly special, and Arthur himself is hiding a deep secret. Can Linus keep his objectivity? Should he, once he discovers the truth?
This book is gentle and kind, full of faith in humanity's better nature despite all the ugliness and cruelty that tears us apart. At its core is a story about what good people do when faced with injustice, and how we find love, joy and family in difficult times. This book shows you a fantasy world you might not want to live in -- parts of it are depressingly familiar with government bureaucracies, dreary cities, uncaring neighbors and casual bigotry -- but you will definitely want to live on Marsyas Island with its wonderful cast of foundlings. Gay romance? Why, yes there is that too, absolutely: a tender, touching love story about how finding a true soulmate can make you the best version of yourself and give you courage to fight for what you care about.
Heartwarming and reaffirming . . . the kind of story we always need, these days perhaps more than ever.
Rating: really liked it
Please excuse me while I dry my tears and wipe that big goofy smile off my face. What an absolutely wondrous story
The House in the Cerulean Sea turned out to be!
Linus is a buttoned-up, live-by-the-rules, no-fun employee who works for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. When he gets his latest secret assignment from Extremely Upper Management to visit an orphanage on a remote island, he doesn't know what to expect. But soon his assignment turns into the adventure of a lifetime, one that will touch his heart and irrevocably change who he is.
This book has the most marvelous characters. Everyone we meet is kindhearted, if a bit prickly at first. As we get to know them, they unfurl into the most loveable creatures. They learn and unbend and grow into their potential, becoming so much more than they were before. The children especially, with their funny and exuberant antics, really grabbed my heart and refused to let go.
There was so much humor packed into the pages, I was constantly chuckling and smiling. It was dry and sarcastic and witty, poking gentle fun at work and bureaucracy and taking things too seriously. Humor is so subjective, so I'm not sure how this would appeal to everyone, but it totally resonated with me and kept me delighted.
At its heart, this is a story about acceptance and seeing someone for who they are on the inside. That is such a worthy view, and one I wholeheartedly agree with. There's definitely an element of cheesiness here that could feel a bit much. At times, it borderlines on preachy, but that's only a few paragraphs here and there, and the humor helps to balance it out.
Occasionally, I come across a book I fall in love with from the very first page, and that's what happened here. This sweet, whimsical, quirky, funny, and magical story gave me all the feelies. I laughed, I cried, I smiled so much that my cheeks hurt. Its message of kindness, joy, and unity makes my heart soar. Honestly, what more could I ask for?
~~~~~~~~~~~~
See also, my thoughts on:Under the Whispering Door
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Rating: really liked it
Updated 12/29/20The House in the Cerulean Sea is now out in paperback! Return to the island where everything is happy, and you'll only be threatened a little bit by a gnome with a shovel and the Antichrist. Now available wherever books are sold. (Buy link below, or support your local indie store!)
https://us.macmillan.com/books/978125...
**************
At last, at long last, my first book with Tor has released!
The House in the Cerulean Sea is a love letter to those who should be allowed to feel small and cared for when the world seems dark. Today, March 17, is a scary time. And it might get a little worse before it gets better. But I promise you it will. This book—this funny little book—is my way of helping you see sunlight through all the dark clouds. I hope you’re ready, because you’re about to go on an adventure you won’t expect.
Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for reading my books. Thank you for letting me do this because without you, I wouldn’t be here.
The House in the Cerulean Sea is now available wherever books are sold! And, if you can, please support your local indie bookstore! They are a big reason why Cerulean has hype. I appreciate all booksellers and librarians more than I could say.
Order today!
Rating: really liked it
I really enjoyed this! It was filled with charming characters, children and adults alike, so much whimsy, a hint of romance, and was just an overall sweet read. However, I can't help but wonder how I would have felt about it had I not seen so much hype surrounding it. I think I would have liked it a bit more because while I enjoyed it a lot, my expectations were too high going in. That being said, I think that it was a very unique and fantastic read. Kind of like Miss Peregrine's but for adults in a way. I particularly enjoyed watching the main character contemplate what really matters in life and if the drudgery and routine of what he does every day is what he really wants, or if he can break out of that. Overall, a great read, but I do wish I hadn't had expectations going in.
Rating: really liked it
IM FUCKING
SOBBING.
S O B B I N G .
This shit hit different and I too, want to live in the House in the Cerulean Sea.
Reading Vlog : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h-ln...
Twitter | Bookstagram | Youtube |
Rating: really liked it
So... this was unexpected.
I'm not sure if it's 2020 or the Holidays getting to me but this was very wholesome!
This definitely felt a bit like a children's book but the characters were attaching and I definitely laughed/smiled a few times while listening to this audiobook.
Rating: really liked it
This book made me cry over a button so clearly it’s a five star read 🥺
Rating: really liked it
omfg this was so cute I am DYING
Rating: really liked it
i have actively avoided this book. even with all the hype its gotten over the past year and half, the story just didnt interest me in the slightest. but then i read TJKs
‘under the whispering door’ and it broke me. so here i am. hoping to have a similar experience.
and i did. gosh, there are so many little nuggets of wisdom and truth embedded in this. there are also moments of pure happiness and love. like this adorable gem:
‘youre too precious to put into words. i think… its like one of theodores buttons. if you asked him why he cared about them so, he would tell you its because they exist at all.’
i cant really add much to the thousands of reviews that have already been posted for this book. but for me, personally, this story is wonderfully life-affirming and gives me the hope in humanity that i desperately need.
↠ 5 stars
Rating: really liked it
I'm shaking my head and locking the gates.
THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS.
Here I was thinking this book was just a wholesome story about kindness and acceptance.
🙂but🙂no🙂
TW for this review: rape, residential schools, ethnic cleansing, traumaEdit: Apparently people are misunderstanding my review. The problem with this book isn't that it's based on historical events. Pretty much every fantasy book is. The problem is that it romanticizes and glorifies residential schools. If some author took a horrific event from the past of my culture, like the Nanjing Massacre, and made it into a love story where everything is solved by the power of love, I would be furious. I don't mean to take away OwnVoices, I'm just spreading awareness about something that feels intensely problematic to me.
Anyway, back to the review.
This book is actually inspired by Canadian residential schools, where indigenous children were separated from their families and forced to abandon their culture and learn the "proper" way to live. The children were mistreated terribly. They were raped and beaten.
Yes, this "wholesome" book is actually based off residential schools. Written by an author who thinks he can take away OwnVoices and use this horrible historical event as a romantic book he knows people will call precious and kind and
important. He glorifies these schools, and despite his insistence that kindness is the answer, at the end of the book, the system is still in place. The message is that kindness solves everything. Which is honestly ridiculous.
He took the trauma of so many children and romanticized it, turning it into a cute fantasy where everything is solved at the end because people are kind to each other.
He said:
“I didn’t want to co-opt, you know, a history that wasn’t mine. I’m a cis white dude, so I can’t ever really go through something like what those children had to go through.
So I sat down and I was like, I’m just going to write this as a fantasy.”
I'm so done. I don't think I need to clarify why this is so problematic.
Linus comes in and once the children are LoVeD, all their problems are solved. Done. Gone. Nonexistent. Never mind that the children are still separated from their parents. Never mind that they are still being forced to blend in with a culture that isn't their own. Never mind that they're still being raped and tortured and beaten and mistreated.
The problem isn't that he based his book off real events. That can be done in a way that doesn't romanticize trauma and doesn't act like everything can be solved because one person LoVeS the children.
This book waters everything down and adds a healthy dose of sugar, covering all the suffering of these poor children with his own voice, rather than, you know, actually sticking to something he won't glorify, water down, or romanticize. He took something tragic and tried to make it cutesy.
Please read this review and this review to educate yourself further.
I will continue to read his books because I think he has the potential to be better than this.
I would give the actual book 3 stars. It was pretty cheesy and lukewarm, and the messages felt forced.
Rating: really liked it
Maybe I'm just a cold person but to me this book felt over the top with saccharine sweetness, went into overkill with the morality lessons, and the odd humor fell flat. I honestly almost gave up on this book at the 75% mark but at that point I figured I might as well just finish it out.
The book starts off just with a weird humorous tone - the heads of the corporation that the main character Linus works for is referred to only as "Extremely Upper Management". I'm not making that up. So from that I assumed that this book was supposed to be somewhat farcical, which I was not expecting in an adult fantasy book, but I went with it. However for the record, this kind of humor is not my cup of tea.
Once the story starts to actually get going, we are then hit left and right with lessons that the kids and Linus 'learn'. Here's a small sampling:
"We should always make time for the things we like. If we don't, we might forget how to be happy.'
"When something is broken, you can put it back together. It may not fit quite the same, or work like it did once before, but that doesn't mean it's no longer useful."
"A home isn't always the house we live in. It's also the people we choose to surround ourselves with."
These aren't bad lessons by any means, but they are simplistic, almost constant, and is a lot of 'telling' not 'showing' - something I expect to read in a YA book and/or Little Women (don't get me started on that book).
And then at the end, what should have been sweet touching moments, I was just ready for the book to end. Especially when hate in a whole village is overcome by a couple of speeches, a gardening Mayor, and a hippie record store owner.
I honestly would have rated this book lower, but it wasn't terrible as much as it was just NOT FOR ME.
Rating: really liked it
after i'd already picked this up and read most of it, i learned through good samaritans in my comments that this was to some degree inspired by the Sixties Scoop.
i won't tell you how you should feel about this, but i think that taking the unbearable trauma (a trauma that included not just the murder of a culture but also murder in a quite literal sense) of real-world Native children and turning that into a happy-go-lucky tale of how Hate Is Bad but the fantastical equivalent of those disgusting and reprehensible nonfiction orphanages is good...
well. i think that's f*cking gross. (and i have read from indigenous voices on both the Pro side and the Con side of this story. i have seen significantly more Con.)
here are some better reviews you can read about this:
Kas's
Sofia's
more of a review of my own to come.
okay, update - to give a bit more of a traditional review:
even had i not been informed of the at-least-partial inspiration behind this, there's no way this would have been higher than a 3 star read to me.
i don't like the saccharine or the sickly sweet. i don't like having to read about an unprecedentedly lonely man with a sh*tty life in a toxic workplace whose own cat, boss, coworkers, neighbors, and goddamn bus driver don't like him, in a city where it rains every day and he NEVER REMEMBERS HIS UMBRELLA.
i don’t like reading weirdly stilted dialogue, where the same sentences (“Quite.” “You dear man.” EVERY OTHER F*CKING SENTENCE SOME VARIATION “Oh you do, do you?” “Oh I did, didn’t I?” “Oh you have, have you?” “How I cherish/adore/simp for you.” Okay the last one I made up for a moment’s levity.)
i feel like this book could have been a hundred pages shorter and had the exact same impact on me. except it would be a touch and a tad more merciful, due to being shorter. this, to me, felt emotionally cheap and profoundly repetitive, as if enacting the same set of scenes where the characters show the same set of traits over and over would hypnotize me into falling in love with them.
this book is touted as feel-good kryptonite, but it didn’t make me feel good. it made me feel bad. maybe the rest of you are being deeply secretive about some magical island with cody ko-style blue ass water and a ragtag group of children sitting and waiting to give you unconditional love and a purpose in life, and also your soulmate and new best friend are there and baking pies, but…
many people are unhappy. many people are lonely. and as far as i can tell in the 23 years i’ve lived in this yucky world, there is no business trip that will deus ex machina your sorry ass into your place and your purpose and your people.
and i’ve never seen a wyvern either.
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tbr reviewi heard reading this is like a pure happiness injection, so here i am immediately
(thanks to diana for the rec!)
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reading all books with LGBTQ+ rep for pride this month!
book 1: the gravity of us
book 2: the great american whatever
book 3: wild beauty
book 4: the affair of the mysterious letter
book 5: how we fight for our lives
book 6: blue lily, lily blue
book 7: the times i knew i was gay
book 8: conventionally yours
book 9: the hollow inside
book 10: nimona
book 11: dark and deepest red
book 12: the house in the cerulean sea
