book review: the house in the cerulean sea

visibility | The three main adults in the novel, including the protagonist, are either gay or queer. Gender is mildly played with as for example one of the girl characters has a beard.

reader health | List of elements the author discusses well: body image, fat positivity, trauma responses, child abuse, systemic isms, ignorance and prejudice, adolescent masturbation, social change.

education | It has a well known moral about “not judging books by covers”.

characters | To say the kids in this book were lovable would be putting it almost offensively and not just lightly. They are bright beautiful little stars and do a great job of warming our hearts. I loved everyone single primary character.

writing style, plot, & entertainment/pleasure | I struggled very much with getting into it, for about the first 3 chapters, because there wasn’t a sense of where the story was taking us. This changed, thank goodness, in chapter 4. The narrative voice is mildly sarcastic, akin to comedy like The Hitchhiker’s Guide, which is a parody-adjacent voice I very much enjoy. After chapter 4, I was completely pulled in and could not put it down. It is truly worth the hype and I’m glad I listened to everyone who recommended it to me.

etc. | I rated it ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐; add to tbr?

thoughts about: cemetery boys

what worked for me personally	what didn’t work for me personally
Santa Muerte being mentioned in a popular YA novel, especially since she is a goddess who looks out for queer people and this is a novel containing several of them	Santa Muerte, a deity I know about through various intersectional occult and witchcraft communities I am personally a part of, being a fictional character in a popular YA fantasy novel.
I enjoyed the slow burn of Yadriel and Julian’s relationship.
I think the author did a great job depicting a wholesome and common group of teens.	I prefer reading about less wholesome teens who are more like how I and my friends were like in high school.
Maritza’s constant presence in Yadriel’s daily life was a subtle but deeply normalizing and realistic depiction of what many lives of teenagers are like.
I love magical realism, fabulism, fantasy lite, and all of the genres that mix magic or magick with contemporary life, so this was in the exact correct subgenre combo for me.	It seemed extremely slow with a lot of build-up to an ending that felt suddenly fantastical after pages of contemporary.
I just love, love, love reading stories about queer people that are meant for rep, visibility, validation, as well as lessons in empathy and understanding.
I think the author did a brilliant job combining Yadriel’s external and internal struggles about gender and magic identity and I love how the author laced that together with the romance by having Julian challenge Yadriel’s thoughts in healthy ways.
I learned a bit about the Latinx community as a whole, whereas prior I had only known things about individual Latinx cultures.
I appreciated how the author showed us complete acceptance of Yadriel’s transness through his relationship with his mother, to ensure the reader is aware that just because Yadriel feels or even might be rejected by the rest of his family, that behavior is not correct, and Yadriel’s mother showed us early on that Yadriel’s gender identity is valid.
I appreciated the way the author challenged readers’ prejudices against Latinx kids by showing a spectrum of different kids, lives, and experiences, but also normalized that, yes, some Latinx kids might happen to reflect a stereotype, and that’s okay but it’s not the absolute norm.
	I found it hard to follow information about Yadriel’s family and was extremely confused about the event with the first uncle.
I love that we get told Yadriel and Julian’s sun signs! I love that even though Yadriel doesn’t believe in astrology, the author basically verified astrology by making Maritza’s guess about Julian’s sign correct. 😏	I cringed so hard when Yadriel talked shit on astrology, but my cringe was in a playful way.

I’m giving it ⭐⭐⭐⭐. Add it to your TBR?