Alessandro Piroddi finished reading The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)
A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret.
Linus Baker leads a quiet, …
Content warning Mild spoilers for a very obvious relationship in the book.
This book has a lot of good intentions, and some well written elements too (especially the magical children). But everything else feels very immature, superficial and naive, both in writing style, structure and the understanding of the underlying political themes. The author's heart is obviously in the right place, the magical children make you go "Awww" constantly, and overall the pages go by fast enough. But man! There are so many inconsistencies, incongruities and paradoxes in the characters (especially Linus) and the world building (especially the government, departments and the people working therein) that my reading enjoyment ended up being really challenged on many occasions. I get that some novels choose to be fairy tale like, where the antagonists are "evil" because yes, that's OK. And then some novels are more mature and nuanced, where the antagonists are "evil" because of personal and systemic reasons, that's more my jam. Unfortunately this book falls in an awkward in-between that just feels contradictory and under baked. And the main romance just rubbed me the wrong way: I can't, for the life of me, understand what Arthur sees in Linus, to the point where it makes Arthur (due to his isolation) look like a "Born Sexy Yesterday" trope.
All in all it wasn't that bad of a read, but I wouldn't recommend it. Which is a shame, because there is a great need of conscientious stories and good representation. This one was just not good enough, for me at least.
