Under the Whispering Door

Because I adored [b:The House in the Cerulean Sea|45047384|The House in the Cerulean Sea|T.J. Klune|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569514209l/45047384.SY75.jpg|62945242], I went into this with high expectations. I started it a while back and it didn't keep my interest, but the same thing happened to me with The House in the Cerulean Sea, so I didn't write it off. But now having finished Under the Whispering Door, I am mad.

When we are introduced to Wallace Price, the protagonist, he is immature, selfish, and cruel. He prioritizes money and winning over compassion. He feels no remorse for the harm he causes others. When he dies, few come to his funeral, and everyone in attendance spends the whole time talking about how he was the worst.

For Wallace, death represents an opportunity to reconsider the way he lived. I have no problem with that, in and of itself. I'm not opposed to redemption arcs or stories about how people can change. I love a zany The Good Place or Miracle Workers setting. I just don't think this was executed well. It was kind of a combination of “the love of a good woman softens man so he stops being horrible to everyone” and the Magical Negro trope.

Wallace's disposition changes rapidly. Who he was before is framed as “not who he really is,” and sometimes played for laughs. The actions he takes to show he's changed address individual fringe characters who were not present for the last several years of his life. He is made the exception to many rules: Allen is not given the same chance for redemption as he was, for example.Wallace is brought back to life in some weird Abraham/Isaac test, when he didn't even want to be. I think the story would have been more compelling if Wallace HAD gone through the door and Hugo stayed back. A more open-ended conclusion would reinforce the argument that there are many stages to existence, all of them brimming with capacity for change and growth, but involving a certain amount of loss as people move to different stages at different points. (Unnecessary, if you ask me) amends are made with Wallace's ex-wife months before Wallace addresses someone he unceremoniously fired whose husband was recently laid off and whose daughter was relying on a college scholarship provided by Wallace's law firm .

Other various complaints: the book is dialogue-heavy and slow-moving. Hugo is a static and boring character who will not stop saying that he never claims to be perfect and he's made mistakes. The dismissive attitude towards Christian understandings of the afterlife while in essence setting up the same outcomes with different names is strange. The setup is too similar to Cerulean Sea, and the word cerulean is used obtrusively. Klune's work is generally sentimental, but sometimes it goes from comforting to saccharine. I listened to the audiobook, and I wish it had been full cast, or at least used different voices.

Despite all this, because I loved The House in the Cerulean Sea so much, I'll probably still give [b:In the Lives of Puppets|60784549|In the Lives of Puppets|T.J. Klune|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1653059893l/60784549.SY75.jpg|74580318] a go.