I've come to the same conclusion, over the years. In the java/groovy/scala world I've written my own a couple times but have come to the conclusion JDBi [1] hits the sweet spot.
Awesome you think so too. I just started making SafeQL, not a full ORM but way of composing SQL fragments with type safety and chose JDBI to build it on. [Link on a nearby sibling comment.] Since you've built some already any feedback would be helpful.