A review by rhie
House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

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

3.75

Great author did an amazing job with the gruesome imagery of this book! It was truly scary and really visceral description. And I loved the unraveling of illusion throughout, as the reader you started to feel as unhinged as the main character and I wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't. I do feel that the romance had strange pacing though, and the ending was odd. It felt a little unsatisfactory to me.



I'm gonna go on a weird little tangent about the aspect I didn't like.
The ending was weird, the dad died I guess but that was an after thought it seemed like and wasn't explained? I guess he died in the fire, which maybe we're supposed to feel like he deserved because he hits women? And the villain wasn't defeated they both just sort of went away. And I was really confused about the terms of the bargain, I thought the deal was for the daugthers to all die and the only way to stop it would be to kill Morella? But then she got killed by the trickster... and he just took his weird random son and left. Shouldn't the main character have defeated him or something? I also felt suspicious of Morella most of the book so I don't know if that was supposed to be a big twist. I did like the twist of them dancing in their rooms with no magic door, that was very ghoulish and spooky.
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