A review by anna__b
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

4.0

I don't really know what to make of this weird, gory little novella. The writing was definitely very beautiful and poetic (and nasty!), but there were also many times where I was wishing the author would just put down the thesaurus, and it maybe could've used one more round of editing to finish polishing up the prose. I think the goal of the story was to take readers on a brief and intriguing trip through this very dark and spooky and fairytale-esque world, and I definitely got that, but for me if this had even been a little longer it would've been so much better. I have felt like most of the novellas I've tried are missing something, so maybe I should just accept it as a me problem and stop reading novellas, but there was a lot of untapped potential here! More specifically, I would've loved to see more of how the relationship between the mermaid and the doctor came to be and understand more about their dynamic - the bonus story (?) after the acknowledgements did touch on this a little but it’s not clear to me why this wasn’t included as part of the main narrative, I think starting the story off with those scenes would’ve been a real improvement. I also would've liked to see a little more of this world before they arrived at the saints' village, although that may be more due to my own curiosity about the setting rather than feeling like the story really NEEDS it. 

So I guess the TLDR is I was intrigued, entertained, and sort of grossed out, but the prose was slightly overwrought and it needed at least a little more length and development to get me truly invested. I'd definitely like to try something else from this author though! 
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