The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

I listened to the The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune and narrated by Daniel Henning when I ran out of podcast episodes and desperately needed to find something to listen to when I was walking the dog. I had heard good things about the book, it was available immediately with no waitlist, and I jumped in without doing any research.

And, hoo boy, this book is exactly the book for me. It's a fantasy story about found family, falling in love, and learning to love yourself.  There are legitimate criticisms of this book to make (it's predictable, the worldbuilding outside of the main setting is weak, there are lots of loose ends), but I'm going to put my hands over my ears and say "I can't hear you" repeatedly when you start talking about those criticisms because I loved every moment of this book. Linus Baker is a social worker who is tasked with doing an evaluation of an orphanage for magical students. Hijinks ensue, characters learn lessons, and Linus learns about how strong he really is. There's an adorable cat, a cantankerous neighbor, an evil boss, and a car ride on the salt from the ocean.

It was great and I will recommend it to everyone I know. I found this book to be everything I want from a book - characters with depth, optimistic, and a happily ever after that feels real. 5/5 stars

But.

There's been some pushback because Klune said in a podcast that he got the idea for this book from reading about the Sixties Scoop, a period of time in Canada from the 1950s through the 1980s in which indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and placed in foster homes and were adopted by white families. Other children were placed in residential homes. It's a really traumatic part of First Nations history in Canada (I knew of the Sixties Scoop, but found Connie Walker's reporting in the podcast Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo to be a true gem in clarifying exactly what the short- and long-term impacts of this policy were). The pushback seems to be that using trauma from the BIPOC experience is absolutely unacceptable and white people need to stop doing it.

But if I had not heard that Klune had said that the idea for this book came from reading about the Sixties Scoop, I would not have made the connection myself. I honestly just read the book as an indictment of the general foster care/group home situation for juveniles.  It's a fantastical world and if Klune had just kept his mouth shut about it, would anyone have made the connections?  

I really and truly loved every moment I spent with the book. Should I take back my approval?  Am I part of the problem of using BIPOC trauma for my own entertainment purposes? It feels gross just to type that sentence, but here we are.  

My husband, for the record, thinks the criticism is ridiculous and that anyone should be able to write about whatever they are inspired by. I tend to think that people are actually impacted by the harm should have a louder voice than I do, but at the same time, I worry that if I had not read this book because of these criticisms, I would have really missed out on a book that hit me in all the right places.

So, I'm asking you, dear readers, what my responsibility is here? Do I recommend it to other people? Do I lower my star rating because of this controversy? Should I do extensive research on every book I own before I start reading it to avoid thorny situations like this?