dpacker 's review for:

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

4.0

---

I had a hard time getting into this one. I selected it as a cruise read (without reading about it) thinking it would be somewhat like his other book I read. When I realized that it was about death, I put it aside and read some more light books for my cruise, then picked it up when I got home. Once I got to the 20-25% mark it got better and then I was hooked. I ended up really liking all of the characters. Klune does a great job making you hate Wallace at first, only to love him by the end. For some reason, I imagined him as Vince Vaughn once his humorous side came out and it kind of fit. We don’t get a time of character development with Mei, but I loved Hugo, Nelson, and Apollo. Hugo makes a great central character who grounds the others…in some cases, literally. If readers are expecting subtle sexual tension like you get in House in the Cerulean Sea, they should realize that it’s a little less subtle here. I really liked their story though. I’m glad I didn’t give up on it because it’s a really good book. The thing that bothered me was that I didn’t realize until far into the book that Hugo was black (and Nelson, too). Maybe I missed something at the beginning, but it annoyed me because I had already visualized each character and couldn’t unsee what I had imagined.