I had not read any T. J. Klune before being approved for the ARC for Murmuration. Therefore, I have no House on the Cerulean Sea to compare it to. But I knew I wanted to read some (Cerulean Sea, probably) and I was happy to get the new book comped. I did not realize at the time, however, that Murmuration is not actually a new book, despite the ARC. There is a thing happening now that really never happened before, and that is the re-publication of hot authors’ backlists once they soar to popularity. Klune has some old self-published stuff. (So do I!) And like with T. Kingfisher, his big, traditional publisher (Tor—I love Tor) is now going back and “releasing” new titles that are not actually new. Probably like with Samantha Shannon’s Bone Season, the new version is fanned up (read: edited). I mean, if I get a chance to move my earlier stuff into a higher level of maturity, I will take it. (Note, though, that fixing it up once is still submitting a work to the aging that it will undergo in the future. You can’t make it universal—you can’t know how to protect it from aging poorly.)

This is why you’ll see Murmuration has a lot of reviews and even old ones, even though it says the publication date in 2026. It was originally published in 2016.

Blurb: Everything is perfect in Amorea, for Mike Frazier and for the other 120 people in town. He owns a house, a bookshop, a cat, and eats at the diner every day where he flirts shamelessly with the waiter, Sean, who seems to be reciprocating and leading them somewhere… more. But why can’t Mike remember anything before waking up in Amorea three years ago? And what’s with the starlings suddenly popping up where only Mike can see them?

Is it a romance? Yes. (LGBTQ+. Gay.) Is it creepy sci-fi? Yes. Is it cozy (like some of Klune’s other stuff)? Yeeees? It has a lot of elements of a cozy, but the point is that it’s not as cozy as we first assume. So it does read like a cozy for much of the book, but it’s not ultimately a cozy. It might be helpful to know that if you are considering reading this book.

Note: I already knew what a murmuration was. I have seen one, one that covered the whole sky and lasted for several minutes, but through which most of the campus slept—I watched it alone like a dream.

Um. I have read several books in a row that I don’t know how to rate. Murmuration was okay. But I don’t really know why it didn’t wow me. Perhaps, like I complained about at length in my review of The Road to Tender Hearts, the writing style and immersion into setting were lacking. Because some people, apparently, are happy with skeletal stories. And I am not. Some people like to be told. I like to be drowned. Telling not only bores me and makes a book harder to read through, but also makes me feel like the story is clunky. Bumpy.

Even so, I am thinking of people who I could recommend Murmuration to. They exist. (The reviews are curently 4.16 on Goodreads, though that’s probably skewed due to anticipation of the drop.)

My original notes as I read Murmuration were actually “Way too repetitive. Kinda strange writing on purpose?” And yes, it is very, very repetitive. And yes, it has a slightly odd tone, like The Stepford Wives or Edward Scissorhands. But I was on to something with this note because, yes, I believe it entirely plausible that this style and even the repetition was done on purpose and eventually—if you finish—you would understand why. Basically. Not that I was surprised by much. I figured the gist of this book out as I went; I was just waiting for incidental details to fill in. Which is probably not how it was meant to be read? What I’m saying is I wasn’t really surprised. You should probably be surprised. And maybe you will be.

I am not disappointed that I read Murmuration. But I was not super entertained as I read it. I was curious. And I would have finished it even without the ARC being on my conscience. It is an interesting blend of romance, sci-fi, thriller, and cozy genres . It spends whole sections in one genre and then another, but there is always something making the reader feel like this place is a little off. Making the reader feel unsteady on their feet, off-kilter, like anything can happen with the turn of the page. Which I guess is pretty cool.

This feels unresolved as a review. Maybe I’m being to hard on books lately. Or I’m just becoming intolerant of books that don’t do what I want a book to do. I mean, I am halfway through Audition (by Katie Kitamura, literary psychological thriller in the style almost of a short story) and that is hitting the marks I need it to. I won’t have a difficult time reviewing it. So maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s the books and other readers’ willingness to settle for an intriguing story without all the other stuff like fancy wordsmithing and immersive flow.

It could make a good miniseries.

Also, you don’t want to know too much about this book before reading it. The slow reveal and they mystery are major parts of the experience.

Warning: spice level 3, though only one scene.