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After reading the blurb, I had high hopes for this book, which were unfortunately disappointed. I had hoped for an interesting character drama focused on a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship overcoming differences after the death of their son/husband. This unfortunately was not the case.

Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law had not previously met, and the mother-in-law did not even know her son had married after dating the main character for just 6 months. So understandably, the mother-in-law was put off by the situation and the women who turned up at her son's deathbed. I had hoped to see the main character and her mother-in-law work through their grief and connect over this shared struggle. Instead, the mother-in-law disappears from the scene, only to reappear after some reflection, wanting to build a relationship with the daughter-in-law. While the story in and of itself was okay, I had very different expectations of what the book would be about and was therefore left disappointed.

Side note: I originally read the German version of the blurb, so this issue might be unique to the German blurb.

I felt like this book was a lot weaker than the first book (The House in the Cerulean Sea). Whilst we follow the same cast of lovable characters, it felt overall like there was less development of characters in this book. In the first book, we get to know all the people on the island and how they slowly open up to Linus. A journey which feels really rewarding. This sense of growth and of discovery is missing from the second book. Arthur gets a little bit more development, but overall I felt like most of the other characters didn't experience any growth. In this book, the characters start taking on the government, and it's policy on magical children. It moves away from the character focused narrative of the first book and becomes more story focused. I generally tend to prefer character driven stories, so that might be the reason this second book fell flat for me.