Picking up The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune makes me think about summer because 1.) I finished this book poolside and 2.) It’s about a house by the sea…so, summer?
Shockingly*, I think I’m missing summer right now, but mostly because it has been off and on feeling like summer here, yet it is fall, and so I dress for fall, but then my body sweats like it is summer and then I change into summer clothes and I’m cold and I just need the weather to pick a season because me and my body are incredibly confused.
*Shockingly, because normally I love the fall.
I’m sure you can see the correlation from that rant to writing about this book.
I wasn’t sure what I’d think about this book because going into it I thought it was a YA novel. Then a few chapters in, I decided it couldn’t possibly be YA because the story was focused on a forty-something man and this, so I’ve heard, is a no no in writing MG or YA fiction. When I really got into it, and the focus switched to children, I thought, Maybe this is a YA novel, but then my mind changed once again.
That being said, I enjoyed this book. I had to narrow down from about a dozen quotes to give you my favorites. The biggest negative I would note about this book is that it did, at times, begin to feel a bit The Little Prince-ish. The wise posturing started to become a little too much for me*.
*But a small part of me still kind of loved it**.
**If confused, see above paragraph about summer and fall. It will help you understand why I cannot make up my mind about things.
Favorite Quotes:
“…even the bravest of us can still be afraid sometimes, so long as we don’t let our fear become all we know.”
“Home is where you feel like yourself…Home is where we get to be who we are.”
“There are mysteries that may never be solved, no matter how hard we try. And if we spend too long trying to solve them, we may miss what’s right in front of us.”
“It’s not about need, Linus. That’s not what gift giving is for. It’s about the joy that someone is thinking of you.”
Rating: 4/5 stars
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