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A review by lauriereadslohf
House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig
4.0
4 and 1/2 Stars
This entire book reads like a dark fairytale and that’s because, I learned as I was midway through reading it, that it is based on a dark fairytale called “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”. It looks like there have been quite a few adaptations when I snooped on the wiki page.
Annaleigh is one of many female siblings who appear to be doomed. When the book starts she’s already lost her mother and several sisters to a supposed family curse. Annaleigh has questions about the recent death of her sister. Questions no one seems able or willing to answer so she begins to seek out the truth on her own. And boy does she find out some stuff!
I listened to this book as an unabridged audio and narrator Emily Lawrence is very engaging and does justice to the dark material. I was never confused as to who was speaking and that’s a rarity for me in an audio with this many characters. This story isn’t a light and happy one. It’s filled with grief and ghosts, uncertainty, and mistrust and Annaleigh navigates her way through all of it with grace, intelligence, and compassion, while all her sisters seem to want to do is dance the sadness away.
If you happened to see my reading updates, there was one point where I feared we were seeing the beginning of the dreaded love triangle but this book doesn’t go there. The male characters all had their secrets and I looked at all of them with a side-eye until all was revealed. I love it when a book can keep me guessing like this and doesn’t take the route most traveled.
If you pick up this book, and I think you should, expect to settle in for an imaginative, haunting, disturbing and heartbreaking experience. There was one point in this book where I screamed (if only in my head) PLEASE UNIVERSE LET THIS GIRL HAVE ONE GOOD THING and that’s only because I cared so much. Which rarely happens, haha.
Read it. I don’t think you’ll be sorry and if you have regrets well, that’s why they make chocolate!
This entire book reads like a dark fairytale and that’s because, I learned as I was midway through reading it, that it is based on a dark fairytale called “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”. It looks like there have been quite a few adaptations when I snooped on the wiki page.
Annaleigh is one of many female siblings who appear to be doomed. When the book starts she’s already lost her mother and several sisters to a supposed family curse. Annaleigh has questions about the recent death of her sister. Questions no one seems able or willing to answer so she begins to seek out the truth on her own. And boy does she find out some stuff!
I listened to this book as an unabridged audio and narrator Emily Lawrence is very engaging and does justice to the dark material. I was never confused as to who was speaking and that’s a rarity for me in an audio with this many characters. This story isn’t a light and happy one. It’s filled with grief and ghosts, uncertainty, and mistrust and Annaleigh navigates her way through all of it with grace, intelligence, and compassion, while all her sisters seem to want to do is dance the sadness away.
If you happened to see my reading updates, there was one point where I feared we were seeing the beginning of the dreaded love triangle but this book doesn’t go there. The male characters all had their secrets and I looked at all of them with a side-eye until all was revealed. I love it when a book can keep me guessing like this and doesn’t take the route most traveled.
If you pick up this book, and I think you should, expect to settle in for an imaginative, haunting, disturbing and heartbreaking experience. There was one point in this book where I screamed (if only in my head) PLEASE UNIVERSE LET THIS GIRL HAVE ONE GOOD THING and that’s only because I cared so much. Which rarely happens, haha.
Read it. I don’t think you’ll be sorry and if you have regrets well, that’s why they make chocolate!