Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

House of Salt And Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

33 reviews

feyreofthestars's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gore, Grief, Body horror, Death, Miscarriage, Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Animal death, and Child death

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Infidelity, and Mental illness

bree_h_reads's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

What an amazing read. Genuinely, amazing.

The way it tackled themes of madness and grief were striking and left me confused in the way one should be when reading from the perspective of someone that’s trapped between illusions and reality. The conclusion actually remedied a lot of the issues I had with the earlier parts of the story. On top of that excellent execution, the characters and world felt very striking and realistic. Sibling dynamics and how they all reacted to things rarely caught me off guard in the sense of being unrealistic. Each character felt very real and alive. Seeing how they interacted with their world and its beliefs was also very interesting. On top of the world building itself being fascinating.

Really my only issue was the ending as it made me so mad I dropped it from 5 stars. (And this only applies the to epilogue/seven months later portion.)

Overall it was an amazing book and retellings that still capture the original while being so distinct and unique are a favourite of mine. It is, however, an extremely dark book and I highly recommend looking at content/trigger warnings before reading it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting, Alcohol, Blood, Child death, Death, Body horror, Miscarriage, Gore, Mental illness, Pregnancy, Grief, and Death of parent

Moderate: Animal death, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Fire/Fire injury, and Stalking

Minor: Domestic abuse, Infidelity, and Emotional abuse

winterhartarts's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual harassment, Toxic relationship, Miscarriage, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Vomit, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Mental illness, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Animal death, Child death, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Self harm, Sexual content, Stalking, Suicide, Body horror, Bullying, Death of parent, Dementia, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Blood, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, Infidelity, Misogyny, and Sexism

martereadsbooks's review

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Kidnapping, Grief, Child death, Mental illness, Murder, and Pregnancy

Minor: Blood

lemelyjerry's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness

Moderate: Murder

Minor: Miscarriage

eviemayhem's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

This was a book I started unsure if I would like it or not. The premise is interesting: a different world, with different gods (some of which still interact with mortals), where 12 sisters are slowly dying one by one. By the time the book starts, the sisters are somewhat shellshocked and are just accepting that they're going to die one-by-one. Only Annaleigh seems to notice that something is just not right with the deaths.

The world-building is fantastic, and the author really drags you in to the torture the sisters are going through as they await to see who will be the next to die. There are so many twists and turns that at a certain point even the reader is unsure of what is real and what is not.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Murder, Self harm, and Suicide

Moderate: Suicide, Gaslighting, and Mental illness

isabella_sans_merci's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This book wavered wildly back and forth between very well written and just stupid. I think the author’s characters are quite weak, which contributed to most of the faults, but when plot and worldbuilding are the focus, it is quite strong. I think this story would work great as a videogame tbh, bc that would allow you to skirt around the fact that sometimes the characters are just intolerably stupid

All in all however, I am forced to conclude that I liked it. Also hats off to the audiobook narrator. She did a great job acting

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Gore, Child death, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Domestic abuse

nut_megg's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore

Moderate: Body horror, Violence, Blood, Child death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Infidelity, Mental illness, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Pregnancy, and Stalking

spookysierra's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Holy Sh*t. Holy Sh*t. Holy Sh*t.

Look. I don't typically write reviews unless a book is amazing or truly terrible. 

This book is fantastic.

Going in, I knew it was going to be a retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses, but I wasn't sure how closely it was going to follow the fairytale. I also didn't realize this book was going to be a spooky murder mystery. Because I went into this not realizing the full scope of the book's premise, the beginning was kind of slow for me; HOWEVER, as soon as I started to realize there was more to this than just a group of girls wandering off into the forest to dance the night away, with dashing young men I. WAS. IN.

My assessment of the book went from a 3 to a 4 immediately and before I was 75% through the book, I could just feel that I was going to rate this 5 stars 

This book had me mistrusting EVERY. SINGLE. CHARACTER. I would go back and forth on some, I would second guess everything everyone was saying. This book is masterful.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Murder, Medical trauma, Child death, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Death of parent, Vomit, Injury/Injury detail, Alcoholism, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Blood, Alcohol, Death, Body horror, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Moderate: Suicide and Terminal illness

tays_books's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Blood, Death, Gaslighting, Pregnancy, Mental illness, Grief, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, and Violence

Moderate: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Suicide, Injury/Injury detail, Fire/Fire injury, Animal death, Death of parent, Self harm, and Miscarriage

Minor: Domestic abuse, Vomit, Rape, Infidelity, Sexual content, and Adult/minor relationship