Somewhere Beyond the Sea - TJ Klune

I read The House in the Cerulean Sea back in January for the library book club I’m in, and I know it’s a beloved and meaningful book for a lot of people. I did really like it, though it’s a bit heavy-handed in its message for my preference. The sequel, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, is even more so, if you can believe that, which…whoa. I love the characters, especially the kids — Lucifer, the Antichrist, and David, the adolescent yeti who joins the orphanage/family in this one — and I liked getting the story from Arthur’s POV.

But here’s where I got stuck. I am really over having female villains in YA books written as ugly and unfeminine. Either she’s short and fat and looks like a toad, like Professor Umbridge in the Harry Potter books, or she’s abnormally tall, unattractive, and maybe has facial hair — Miss Marblemaw here, Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, et al. I’m not saying I need all women characters to be attractive. I’m just tired of the “look how her outsides match her insides!” schtick.

To be fair, TJ did write an attractive lady villain here too, but that’s only because he wrote JK Rowling in as the evil and bigoted interim head of the Departments in Charge of Magical Youth and Magical Adults. I appreciate that he’s trying to be the anti-JKR, as he puts it in the author’s note at the end, and I’m not sorry I finished the book (I really did love those kids!). I think I’m gonna take a break from YA for a while, though.