UK Book Club discussion

So, the Group Read for June is The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune.

Please post your comments and observations in this thread. Remember to include a SPOILER! alert at the start of the post, if you wish to wade into spoiler territory or discuss the ending...

Picked this book up a couple days ago and just started to read , reminds me of a series of unfortunate events 😃

I had never come across this author before and had no idea about the genre. It is not the kind of read I would normally go for, one reason for joining the book club.
I enjoyed the story, fantasy is not a genre I am drawn towards, so this was a lovely diversion. The writing is good, if a little simplistic, but I suspect that it is aimed at a different reader than myself, is this YA fiction? I've seen it classified as such.
I think the underlying message is strong and very relevant today. There is nothing wrong with being different, but some people will be afraid of anyone who is. A little like real life. Having the courage to be different and be vulnerable are certainly things I could strive more for.
I had to look up some of the types of 'beings' having no idea what they were. I became quite fond of some of them, all of them in fact, particularly Theodore. And against the authoritarian establishment, the jobsworths, the mob.
I found it slow reading, the story did not hold me, I wasn't rushing a meal to get back to the narrative. Perhaps this is to do with who it was written for, YA, fans of fantasy literature, I had no experience really of how to engage with the prose.
Having said all that, I was rooting for them at the end, the end being well foreshadowed, I still wanted to know it had happened.
I enjoyed the read. There is some nice moments of comedy, sarcasm, and pathos. The narrative arcs work well, nothing is left hanging.
Would I recommend it to my partner, I think not. Would I read anymore from the author, again, I think not. But it was a good book that was well written. It just wasn't for me.

Just starting...

I'm about halfway through. It's not my usual cup of tea, but it's raising a few chuckles. I think Lucy would get on very well with Wednesday Addams...

That is exactly what I thought Liz

I tried to read this; I gave it a week—a week in which I kept finding other things to do. In the end I had to give up. Unlike others in this thread, I enjoy a good dantasy; I quite like magic in storylines. But I hated the writing. I thought it was clumsy and obvious, constantly explaining to the reader instead of trusting us to get it. It was slow and one-note. And it was full of errors that a first-year copy editor ought to have extirpated. Moving on.

I finished a few days ago. I found it an easy read, but perhaps too easy. While I supported it's underlying message and I chuckled a few times, it didn't leave much of an impression on me and I agree, it was all a bit obvious. I'm just not the audience for this book, I think it would be better appreciated by a younger reader.

Took longer than I thought it would to read (wasn’t exactly unputdownable) but enjoyed this story, not as much as I thought I would or as much as I did one of his other books, Under the Whispering Door.

An interesting Orwellian/Umbrella Club like society and a sensitive treatment of isms and relationships, I’m looking forward to reading his other novel on my TBR list, In the Lives of Puppets soonish. Now onto July and Aleppo 🙂