#12 [2022/CBR14] The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

I cannot remember where I first saw The House in the Cerulean Sea (2021) by TJ Klune, but I may have been looking for available audiobooks at the library. It has primarily positive reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, and I thought it might be a fun listen during my commute. In the end, I thought it was all right. I liked some parts, but on the whole it felt too long and I was not fully invested in the characters.

My favorite part of the book was probably the beginning when we are introduced to Linus Baker. Linus is a 40-year-old, by-the-book office worker. He works for the Department of Magical Youth, writing reports on orphanages that care for children with extraordinary powers. The Department of Magical Youth is a bureaucratic nightmare with characters that reminded me of villains from a Roald Dahl book. Linus takes comfort in the procedures and rules but he is miserable. His home life includes a very unlikeable neighbor and a cat named Calliope.

But one day "extremely upper management" (I did think this was funny) called Linus to come before them. They give him a new assignment: he must travel to a remote orphanage located on an island, stay there for a month, and report back. Linus has never travelled anywhere and never even seen the ocean, but he packs up his cat and gets on a train the next morning.

On the island, he discovers Arthur Parnassus in charge, six remarkable children, and an island caretaker. The children include: Talia, a female gnome who is over two hundred years old but developmentally still only an adolescent; Chauncey, who is of undetermined origin and yearns for nothing but to be a bellhop; Sal, a timid boy who writes beautiful poetry and turns into a dog when scared; and Lucy, short for Lucifer--because he's the antichrist. 

Linus quickly changes from being terrified of the kids and wary of Arthur to getting to know them individually and joining them on adventures. He dutifully sends his weekly updates to the Department of Magical Youth in the nearby town, and he notes the town's striking prejudice against the kids. In this world all magical beings must register, and there are signs everywhere saying "If you see something, say something" urging people to report anything magically suspicious. In addition, Linus and Arthur seem to share a special connection.

I thought there was some fun and sweetness in this story. It was satisfying to see Linus finally happy with himself and living his best life. But I didn't love it. Although some of the kids were fleshed out a little bit, primarily Lucy, Talia, and Sal, I did not feel that about the others. The only thing that makes Chauncey unique is that he looks weird and wants to be a bellhop. He seemed much more like a cartoon than an actual kid. And the world wasn't developed enough for me to feel that there were any real consequences. I couldn't help but compare it to Nothing to See Hear by Kevin Wilson, which I recently read. Nothing to See Hear also had a protagonist with nothing to lose and remarkable children, but I felt so much more connected to the characters, I laughed more, and I was more satisfied at the end.