Ponder: Somewhere Beyond the Sea

Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune ©2024 is a sequel to The House in the Cerulean Sea which I read and thoroughly enjoyed, awarding it five stars in my December 2021 post. I am disappointed to report that the sequel, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, fell far short of my expectations and I am rating it only two stars.

The House in the Cerulean Sea is the charming, creative tale of an orphanage for  magical children who are housed on an island segregated from the main population of the village. The children are feared to be dangerous monsters, because they are not yet mature enough to be able to control their special powers. The children are Chauncey, a green amorphous blob with eyes on stalks on top of his head; Phee, a sprite/fairy; Talia, a gnome;  Lucy, a charming, intelligent six-year-old whose nickname is short for Lucifer;  Sal, a teenage shapeshifter;  and Theodore, a wyvern.  A fan artist created these renderings of the six orphans. Surprisingly, they match incredibly with the images I pictured in my mind while reading the book.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a continuation of the story where a seventh child, a young yeti name David is added to the mix. The orphanage is audited to "assure the safety" of the children but the motives are not at all altruistic. Although TJ Klune does a good job of reprising facts from the first book so that even a reader who has not read The House in the Cerulean Sea can still follow, I would advise against reading the sequel. No more imagination is added. Additional magic was fun, amusing and brought a smile to my face. I can see its potential to be made into a movie with opportunities for extensive computer graphics; but the description in the text were vivid enough I can see and enjoy the scenes in my mind. And this second book was very preachy... and philosophical... and long. I just wanted to be finished. This book's rating on Amazon was 4.5 out of 5 which surprised me. I did strongly agree with the two and three star review comments and cited one of them below as expressing my sentiments very well.

If you are curious about the transgender comments remark of J.K. Rowling this Glamour magazine article might help. (Yes, weird I know coming from Glamour magazine.) Ok, this is a much longer review than I intended for a book I did not like. It did get me thinking but then it repeatedly pounded those thoughts into my brain ad nauseam.

★★☆☆☆ Ok, not great; some redeeming features; I finished it

Ponder: The Banned Book Club

There is an old adage that you can't judge a book by its cover. Well, neither can you judge a book by its title, as I learned from The Banned Book Club by Brenda Novak ©2024. Yes, the feisty lead character Gia did start a club featuring the books that were banned from the high school library where she attended seventeen years ago. That club was a commonality that bound her with her high school friends but, do not be fooled, it was hardly the focus of this novel.

The book does have suspense and keeps the reader engaged. However, the driving drama points of this book were three depressing topics:

• Gia and Margot's mother is dying of cancer and needs support and help from her two daughters
• Gia's younger sister Margot's struggles with a verbally abusive husband and plans how to escape him since his family is relatively wealthy and has a strong presence in the town of Wakefield, Idaho.
• The purported sexual misconduct of Gia's high school English teacher creates a situation of "he said versus she said" that divides the town in two camps of opinion that makes a hometown return very awkward and difficult for Gia nearly two decades later

Brenda Novak is one of my repeat authors. I have rated her thriller novel Before We Were Strangers five stars, but that rating is not her norm. I have enjoyed her Silver Springs and Whiskey Creek series. Most of her books I have given three or four stars. The Banned Book Club is of similar middle-of-the-road caliber. It kept me engaged, curious, and wondering how it would end, plus there was a bit of romance interjected to lighten the mood. Amazon dubbed the book as, "a  feel-good romance with drama, friendship, and a love story set in a small American town", a description I think is misleading. But, far from being deep contemplative literature, or the other extreme of a "feel-good romance", it still entertained and made me consider the plight of both victims and perpetrators of misdeeds. Amazon readers rated it at 4.5 stars with two-thirds of its readers awarding it five stars. I still maintain that The Banned Book Club is worth three stars. 

★★★☆☆ Better than average; not a waste of time