Out of the Blue may be one of my favourite books of 2022

 

I remember reading Jay’s Gay Agenda, also by Jason June, towards the end of 2021. So, I was pretty surprised when Out of the Blue, the book I’m talking about today, came out so soon. Although, I’ve said it came out soon after the first book, it could well have been the case that I just didn’t read the first book for a while after it came out. I feel like that’s more likely than the two being released close together.

That being said, our blurb says that Crest isn’t excited to be on their journey: the month-long sojourn on land all teen merfolk must undergo. The gig is they have to help a human within one moon cycle and return to where they came from. If they fail, they get stuck on land forever. Crest wants to get their journey over and done with because humans are disgusting. Then in LA, Crest has a new name and meets Sean, a lifeguard, whose boyfriend has recently dumped him. So, Crest is helping Sean make his ex boyfriend jealous. It’s fake dating, except one of them is merfolk, and the conflict is laid out right from the outset. Kind of slay from the outset, I can’t lie. Before I opened the book, it was the case of I could tell that Crest was going to have to decide between going back into the ocean or staying on land.

Now, I am begging for books to start numbering their chapters again. Because while this is dual POV, the chapters aren’t numbered, and are headed by the characters’ names. I will say, at least with them being headed this way, I can tell who’s POV we’re in, unlike in Kings of B’more, that just left you to fend for yourself to figure it out.

Still, the first chapter starts with Sean, he’s working at this pool club as a lifeguard, and we physically see him get dumped by Dominic. Now let me tell you, as someone who has been dumped, I feel like there’s this unspoken rule of place and time. Like if you’re going to dump someone, do it somewhere appropriate. Because Dominic dumps Sean in the middle of Sean’s shift at work. And, to me, that’s the epitome of wrong place and time to do it. Like, homeboy couldn’t have waited? Regardless, Sean’s best friend/co-worker, Kavya, then literally chases Dominic out of the club. You also find out that Sean loves a rom-com, thanks to his dad. Crest’s first chapter introduces us to the concept of the Journey, of helping the human, and tells Crest their human name is Ross, and also that only one merfolk in the last 100 years hasn’t finished their journey and chose to stay on land.

I will say, I definitely had a few questions after reading this chapter that I wanted the answers to. Most of them were about what happens when the merfolk go on land. Like, since they have to be there for a month, do they have to eat normally? Do they get clothes? Is it a Terminator kind of deal? Are they just homeless? Regardless, Crest (who then becomes Ross) and Sean meet after Crest washes up on the beach. And we learn of this rule that merfolk can’t get wet in front of humans, because their fins come out. It’s very, “Cleor, naur, the condensation.” Also, if the merfolk go back into the ocean before their month is over, they get stuck as a human forever. In these first few chapters, Crest is so bad at being human, and I loved it, personally. They don’t know how to cross a road, they don’t understand basic human concepts, like getting dumped. And some of those questions I had and mentioned earlier in this paragraph do get answered pretty quickly, which I was happy about.

Given the cover of the book, I assumed that Sean was going to find out that Crest/Ross was merfolk at some point, and, minor spoiler, he does, but it the reveal didn’t happen quite in the way I was expecting it. It’s one of those things, I knew it was going to happen, and I did have one idea as to how it would have happened, but my idea wasn’t how it actually happened. And staying on this train for a moment longer, given the vibe of the book, I thought it would straight up just be fake dating, with one of them being merfolk, but it wasn’t. There was, shockingly, actually other stuff that went on with the book. I’m not going to spoil what it is, since this book came out recently, but it was stuff that linked the characters together, more so than just physically being there together. That’s such a nothing statement, I know, like I literally just said nothing, but I don’t know how else to word it without spoiling anything.

There’s also a really small cast of characters in this book, outside of Sean and Ross, the only characters that make any major impact are Sean’s bestie, Kavya, and his ex, Dominic, and Dominic’s new boyfriend, Miguel. I was a fan of this, because I often find that if a cast of characters is too big, then the characters don’t always get the page time that they deserve to properly develop. I also feel like I appreciated it because when I write creatively for myself, I always tend to lean towards smaller casts. I feel like if I have a smaller cast, then I can easily place them into their roles, and if I have too many characters, I feel like I don’t know what to do with them all, and I never want a character to just be there for the sake of being there. I want them to contribute to something.

Now, I’m not going to spoil this book, but I’m going to quote Bob the Drag Queen to talk about the last 100 pages. And what I have to say about it was that this was wild.

So, in terms of the ending, with how the book had set itself and its world’s rules up, I assumed what the ending was going to be, and my assumption did end up being correct, and because of that, it meant that didn’t leave me any room to be potentially disappointed. And while I did see the ending coming (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in my eyes) the way that it got there? That was the wild part. The last 50 pages or so of this book had me snatched, gagged, gooped and pooped. There’s this one Tumblr post that’s just an image of a children’s toy called “Fashion Rats”, and on the packaging, there’s a bit that says, “includes wig”, and the one comment on this post has zoomed in on the “includes wig” bit and says, “Thank god, because I just lost mine”. And that’s how I feel about Out of the Blue.

Is this book going to be included in my favourite books of 2022? Yes. Yes, it is.

Okay, bye!