Read a book - came highly recommended as one that would warm the coldest cockles of my heart and reinspire my faith in humanity and stuff. 

It was beautiful and charming. The little nods to the fourth wall at the ends of Chapter 19 and the epilogue were very delicate, very light. And somehow... I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

Linus Baker is a great POV character. I understand why so many people fall in love with him and the islanders, and I nearly cried towards the end when the wyvern gave Linus the brass button.

But did it end too neatly as the institutions responsible for the repression of magical folk began to be dismantled? Was there too much whimsy and light without enough darkness and cruelty to balance it out? Was it too preachy, or am I just a monster who doesn't care about love and acceptance and belonging? Are the child side characters just too preciously written, or am I child-hating bogeyman? Is Arthur a Marty Stu who never loses control, or does he just happen to have mysterious parentage and bottomless reserves of empathy? Is the setting timeless and quaint, or does the worldbuilding beg for details that aren't there? 

Many might also draw parallels between The House in the Cerulean Sea and Good Omens. Linus reminds me strongly of Aziraphale, but there's no Crowley analogue to balance out the lightness. And Linus's final confrontation with Management is... lacking in teeth, maybe. Or very one-sided. And then there's Lucy, the antichrist of The House in the Cerulean Sea, who could be roughly compared to Adam of Good Omens. Lucy says things about darkness and blood and the end of the world and stuff, but as Linus observes, he doesn't really mean it most of the time - it's usually in the name of shock value.  How do they know his parentage?  What exactly makes him dangerous? How will he end the world? Whereas Adam does mean it when he says he wants to remake the world. 

I think at the end of the day, I have a very low tolerance for sweetness and sentimentality. I want murder, mayhem, and melodrama. The fluffiest book I own is The Fairy Godmother, which suffers from typical Lackey flaws - the pace drags, the character development is quite on-the-nose, and everyone gets their just desserts at the end. But I love the book anyways because the characters are occasionally cruel or at least petty, the fair stands alongside the foul, and most of all, the worldbuilding and the protagonist's agency in it just hits all the soft spots in my heart. 

The House in the Cerulean Sea doesn't push those buttons for me. I strongly recommend it if you have a good tolerance for fluff. Do I still do starred reviews? If so, then this is a 2/5.