The House in the Cerulean Sea

 The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune, 394 pages.

Linus Baker works for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY for short) and spends his rainy, grey life in a rainy, grey city evaluating government orphanages that house magical youth and filling out paperwork. His long and steady record leads Extremely Upper Management to send him to evaluate an extremely secret orphanage that houses children that are considered especially dangerous or unusual. The monthlong visit with the weird and wonderful children of Marsyas Island Orphanage floods him with all of the color his life was missing, and soon he's wondering how he will ever live without the children and their caring and enigmatic caretaker. 

This was a reread for me, and it was just as wonderful the second time (although perhaps not as desperately needed as December of 2020 when I read it the first time). I love all of the characters, Linus included, and the whole novel reads like a warm hug. At a recent author event I attended Klune mentioned that this was the first book of what he informally thought of as the "Kindness trilogy" (along with Beneath the Whispering Door  and In the Lives of Puppets) and I can't get over how completely apt that is. This is a book about compassion, finding love and community, and confronting biases (both internalized and towards others). A truly lovely book, highly recommended to anyone who hasn't already read and also people who have.