Okayyyy, wow. That’s how I’m going to start off this review because – wow. I read The Cerulean by Amy Ewing, which is currently available to buy or borrow from the library. I read the ARC of The Cerulean with a friend of mine recently and both of us were severely disappointed – let’s get into why!

Here is the description from Goodreads:

Sera has always felt as if she didn’t belong among her people, the Cerulean. She is curious about everything and can’t stop questioning her three mothers, her best friend, Leela, and even the High Priestess. Sera has longed for the day when the tether that connects her City Above the Sky to the earthly world below finally severs and sends the Cerulean to a new planet.

But when Sera is chosen as the sacrifice to break the tether, she doesn’t know what to feel. To save her City, Sera must throw herself from its edge and end her own life. But something goes wrong and she survives the fall, landing in a place called Kaolin. She has heard tales about the humans there, and soon learns that the dangers her mothers warned her of are real. If Sera has any hope to return to her City, she’ll have to find the magic within herself to survive.

So first things first, when I read the description and first received this book I was so excited. Not only did it sound amazing and new, it had such a unique plot I had to read it and see what it was all about.

My first reaction to this book was, what is going on? The premise of the plot does not even cover the first 50 pages out of 500. There is so much more that goes on during this book that it gets so confusing and sporadic it’s hard to keep up. And the layout of it did not help. For one, there are so many different points of view (POVs), it’s hard to keep up in the sectioned setup. We have Sera, Leela, Agnes, and Leo all somewhat thrown together based on location – which made it so difficult to establish a timeline when switching POVs.

To further explain why I did not like this book, I’m going to break it up into a few sections.

1) The fact that the main character Sera is the only straight woman in her society, which consists of polyamorous lesbian couples, is unnecessary to me. Besides the fact that she claims she is different, Sera acknowledges that some women do not feel attraction and choose not to marry – which would have been fine. But making her straight added nothing to the plot in this entire book, which makes it feel like she’s trying to make her feel like an “other” to the reader and I was not a fan of that. The author continually makes a point of mentioning that Sera is different, but does nothing to explain why her being different matters. I would have been much more impressed if she had made her Ace/Aro than making her straight, because at least then she would be different without countering the idea that straight people are somehow “weird” or “different”. Because they’re not – they’re the norm.

2) The character Leo had a weird and sudden character shift that was somewhat explained, but so underdeveloped it felt wrong and out of place. It felt like he was made to be the bad guy and then changed his mind and decides he wants to be the good guy? He starts off wanting to do anything to please his father with no regards to other people around him, but suddenly when it affects Sera, he changes his mind and becomes a good person and wants to help her. It seemed so sudden and out of character, I’m not sure if it was Ewing’s intention to make it that sudden or not, but regardless, it was very confusing. 

3) I adored Leela and Agnes’ character so much and honestly I just wanted to read from their POV and nobody else’s. The way they were written and portrayed in the book not only made me love them, but it made it much harder to read from Leo or Sera’s POV later in the book, especially since they both came across so childish and whiny in comparison to Leela and Agnes.

4) The set up of the book by location did not make sense to me and made the story so choppy. Instead of sprinkling different character POVs in to explain what’s going on in the meantime, we get six different sections and have to connect the dots that way through four different POVs. Not only would it jump to different POV by location, but we mostly get Sera, Leo, and Agnes’ POV until suddenly about 75% of the way through, we finally get Leela’s POV and it’s such a sudden shift, it was honestly annoying. I would have much preferred if it was a constantly changing POV and the author can set the location so we know where they are, instead of splitting up by section and then POV. To sum it up, it was not enjoyable to read it that way for me.

Now to give the author the benefit of the doubt, I did read the advanced copy of this book, so some of those issues may have been resolved in the final draft, but if they weren’t I would not recommend this book to a friend.

Overall, I really wanted to like the story and the mystery of what was going was enticing. But the setup and some of the characters killed it for me and unfortunately, as much as I wanted to like this book, I didn’t. I would give this book /5 stars.

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If you’re looking for a cool science fiction, space getaway, I would honestly suggest anything else at this point – I’ve heard Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff  is amazing and so is Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston.