I've come to the same conclusion from using a number of query and relation mapping frameworks (e.g. Rails, Spring). I've finally decided to write one that solves the problems that I have with them. It comes down to just a few things:

  1. Embrace SQL
  2. Handle the ON clauses for JOINs
  3. Fetch relations of sets of records (eager or lazy at the call site)
     in batches without making N+1 queries
  4. (bonus) async composability

I decided to make it in Java so it works with any language in the ecosystem and having a simple type system will make it easy to port to any others. Don't mind all the various typed expressions, you can just pass in an SQL string with locally resolved bindings then use that element in larger queries then finally execute the resulting tree that maps to the result type. I just started last week and I'd love any feedback like if you think it's a good idea or any specifics. I'm using JDBI underneath which is a good level of abstraction to complement it.

Edit (you might want the link): https://github.com/karmakaze/safeql