Review: The House in the Cerulean Sea
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
When I picked up The House in the Cerulean Sea, I wanted something gentle, something to soften the world’s edges for a spell. That is just what I found. Linus Baker, who keeps to himself and his endless paperwork, lives a life so grey it could almost disappear. Then comes the summons to a distant island, where he must inspect an orphanage for magical children. There, he meets six unusual youngsters, each with their own peculiarities, and Arthur Parnassus, who cares for them all.
The writing never clamours for attention. The loveliest moments arrive quietly, like sharing tea in silence or watching someone defend a friend without any fuss. Yet as I read on, a sense of familiarity crept in. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children lingered at the edge of my thoughts, with its secret refuge, strange children, a kind but formidable guardian, and cold officials peering in from the outside. Klune follows that same path, but he wraps it in warmth and offers a gentle queer romance. It is soothing, certainly, but the resemblance is hard to ignore. I kept hoping the story might surprise me, take a turn of its own, but it largely followed Ransom Riggs’s old route. I felt a little disappointed by that.
Beneath all the kindness, something darker flickers. Klune has spoken about drawing from the bleak history of residential and boarding schools, those places where children were taken from their families, all in the name of improvement. In this story, he imagines a world where kindness might take root in those old wounds. It is a comforting thought, and for a while I let myself believe in it. Still, there is a tension beneath the surface. For people whose families have truly lived through those histories, seeing the scars softened into fantasy might feel uncomfortable, perhaps even painful. The truth is harsher, and I am not sure if gentling it honours what really happened. Some hurts want to be left as they are, rough and unhealed. I do not want to judge the dream too harshly, but I notice how it walks a narrow line between comfort and forgetting.
Even so, I could not bring myself to judge it too sternly. At heart, the story is simple and steadfast: we do not have to remain what the world has shaped us into. Linus starts out caught in his own fears and habits, but small kindnesses begin to free him. On that wild island, love is not fate; it is a choice made again and again. So often, fantasy gives us prophecy and calls it growth, but here, Klune suggests ordinary decency is enough. That feels both brave and comforting to me.
Klune turns his attention to what empathy looks like in practice, showing how it can soften the rigid walls built by fear and bureaucracy. The story does not lecture; instead, it lets quiet acts do the work. Real understanding comes from choosing to see people as they are, not from rules or distance. In a world so set on order, empathy offers a way to make choices more human, to chip away at old prejudices, and allow for something larger, something more genuine.
When I finished the book, I let its world slip away. I do not think I will return to it, but I am glad to have known it for a time.
For those who want a gentle, hopeful found-family tale with a tender queer romance, this book gives it, so long as you can hold its hopefulness together with the shadow of real history. If pure comfort without darkness is what you seek, perhaps this is not the place. For the rest of us, it is a quiet reminder that kindness is still a kind of courage, and one we may choose each day.
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