The House in the Cerulean Sea: TikTok made me buy it!
TJ Klune's much-loved novel is the kind of book that sneaks up on you. It starts quietly, almost gently, and then before you know it you're completely invested in a cast of characters you never expected to care about quite this much. At its heart, it's a story about belonging, about the families we stumble into rather than the ones we're born to, and about choosing love over obligation when the two pull in opposite directions. Linus Baker is forty, solitary, and thoroughly unremarkable by his own reckoning. He shares a small house with a scheming cat and a record collection, and spends his working days filing reports for a government department that oversees magical orphanages. It's a safe, forgettable existence. Then he's dispatched on a classified mission to a remote island home, where six extraordinary children live under the care of the quietly compelling Arthur Parnassus. One of those children, incidentally, happens to be the Antichrist. What follows is warm, funny, and surprisingly moving. Klune writes with real tenderness without ever tipping into sentimentality, and the slow-burn romance between Linus and Arthur is handled with patience and care. V.E. Schwab called it 'like being wrapped up in a big gay blanket', and that's honestly hard to improve on. The Washington Post warned it was 'likely to cause heart-swelling', and Charlaine Harris described it simply as beautiful. All three assessments hold up. It's a quietly joyful read that lingers.
- Author: Travis Klune
- Publisher: Tor
- Genre: Fantasy
- ISBN: 978-1529087949
- Pages: 400 pages