Reviews tagging 'Child death'

House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

171 reviews

mariners_maniac11's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Minor: Child death

citrus_seasalt's review against another edition

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death and Miscarriage

Moderate: Body horror and Animal death

Minor: Self harm and Suicide

alyvia_jeane's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad fast-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Miscarriage, and Child death

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Suicide, Blood, Murder, Animal death, Grief, and Pregnancy

It kept me guessing and wanting more. I was just as confused as the main character and that is hard to do. Didn’t guess the end but omg that was crazy!! Loved the atmosphere and imagery. Verity is my new baby and poor fisher/Hanna! Is that a spoiler? Nah. Was worried I wouldn’t like this but definitely wrong. Not a 5 star bc there was a little thing that happened that I didn’t like. But otherwise great.

jorbe's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense fast-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

3.0

Went into this fairly blind. Overall, it was a decent read! The story was fast paced and kept me wanting to know what was next, but the character's beliefs and actions often fell flat for me. A couple of examples: Annaleigh thinks she hallucinated Cassius but never questioned if she was just genuinely losing it, or when Camille jokes about killing Annaleigh in a family that is marred by continuous death...feels like lazy or not very well fleshed out writing to me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Violence and Child death

Minor: Sexism and Death of parent

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

antimony's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

in this retelling of the twelve dancing princesses, annaleigh is the sixth daughter of twelve. four of her older sisters have died, one after another, and rumors abound about her family being cursed. annaleigh becomes increasingly sure eulalie, the most recent of her sisters to die, was murdered, and she also becomes increasingly plagued by maddening visions. as she and her sisters sneak out to dance the night away, annaleigh begins to wonder if there is something more sinister hidden behind these balls...

ok first of all to start off the setting of this was IDEAL. spooky windswept, salt-encrusted, waterlogged islands above cliffs and a sea that is not really actually evil at all but it is the sea so it must be and i mean that in the most positive way. AND theres a lighthouse. five stars for the world i would love to live in it. and the ENDING was absolutely insane. oh my god. i finished this right before bed last night and then i just had to turn off the light and stare at the wall and go to sleep without any time to process .... there was so much there. maybe this afternoon i will have to go back and reread the last couple of chapters. because they were so insane.

THAT BEING SAID i did have a couple issues. the romance was so very ya but to be fair this is a ya book. so what do you expect. also annaleigh had better chemistry with fisher SORRY. i don't care that

he was not actually fisher because fisher was dead

i am glad that at least the romance didn't overpower the main story it was just a little annoying. kinda instalove and the reveal about cassius's mom's identity was. i dont know it felt like nonsense. and i still don't understand how

he came back at the end. like i know it was his wish and annaleighs wish but wasn't he dead? or did he only half die because he's half god? ugh i don't know.

i also wish i'd gotten a little more explanation on

what was real after all -- like did the other sisters also think they were dancing? did the confrontation when annaleigh got back from the lighthouse happen at all? etc etc.

ALSO it kind of felt like some of the 12 dancing princesses elements were thrown in just to keep it a retelling like the balls didn't show up for a while and

was the contest for suitors even real?

that also being said i loved that annaleigh's dream was to be a lighthouse keeper and that

her happy ending was getting to work at the lighthouse after all :)

im a lighthouse fan !!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child death, and Grief

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

a big reveal at the end is that a lot of events in the book didn't happen, and after that there's a lot of questioning what is real or not.

also the pregnancy tag in moderate is because one character gives birth and i wasn't sure what else to tag that with but it is a pretty big scene in the book

alyssalusey's review against another edition

dark

2.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Pregnancy, and Miscarriage

elysenicole213's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Child death, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, and Grief

trigger warnings for traumatic birth scene

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