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A review by opheliapo
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
2.0
This was so okay it put me into a reading slump. I know tastes differ but I am SO surprised that this flat ass book was SO well loved by SO many reviewers I respect.
Personally, I can’t stand it when American authors try to adopt the ‘classic British’ mode of writing, especially in middle grade or young adult fiction. If you’re not from the UK it may not be so conspicuous, but it feels forced and in-genuine when it’s a part of your native language, and this book was full of it.
On the topic of language, a huge pet peeve of mine is writers who include child-heavy narratives in their stories without doing an ounce of research into how children actually speak. I know this is nitpicky, but the development of language in children is fascinating, and it feels like an important thing to know if most of the dialogue in your book is going to be spoken by young people. This book used the ‘precocious explainer’ mode for most of the child characters and it is painfully inauthentic to the way most children actually communicate (especially with adults).
As far as the narrative itself goes, the two climaxes of the story hooked on a social clap-back about bigotry and intolerance, which is also a huge pet peeve of mine, particularly in narratives with thinly veiled allegories in their central themes. Anybody who has ever experienced abuse or bigotry knows that people don’t suddenly get knocked into empathy and understanding because someone aimed some smart comments at them. It’s a juvenile perspective on how the world works, it’s a ‘can’t we all just get along’ viewpoint which ignores methods of self preservation and social demand that are actually helpful when dealing with intolerance and dehumanisation. Again, it felt inauthentic and saccharine.
Finally, I love depictions of queer love and it’s very rare for me not to be emotionally swayed into loving novels when they include LGBTQ+ themes but, even for a children’s book, Arthur and Linus’ relationship was so squeaky clean it was almost clinical.
Personally, I can’t stand it when American authors try to adopt the ‘classic British’ mode of writing, especially in middle grade or young adult fiction. If you’re not from the UK it may not be so conspicuous, but it feels forced and in-genuine when it’s a part of your native language, and this book was full of it.
On the topic of language, a huge pet peeve of mine is writers who include child-heavy narratives in their stories without doing an ounce of research into how children actually speak. I know this is nitpicky, but the development of language in children is fascinating, and it feels like an important thing to know if most of the dialogue in your book is going to be spoken by young people. This book used the ‘precocious explainer’ mode for most of the child characters and it is painfully inauthentic to the way most children actually communicate (especially with adults).
As far as the narrative itself goes, the two climaxes of the story hooked on a social clap-back about bigotry and intolerance, which is also a huge pet peeve of mine, particularly in narratives with thinly veiled allegories in their central themes. Anybody who has ever experienced abuse or bigotry knows that people don’t suddenly get knocked into empathy and understanding because someone aimed some smart comments at them. It’s a juvenile perspective on how the world works, it’s a ‘can’t we all just get along’ viewpoint which ignores methods of self preservation and social demand that are actually helpful when dealing with intolerance and dehumanisation. Again, it felt inauthentic and saccharine.
Finally, I love depictions of queer love and it’s very rare for me not to be emotionally swayed into loving novels when they include LGBTQ+ themes but, even for a children’s book, Arthur and Linus’ relationship was so squeaky clean it was almost clinical.