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abinthebooks 's review for:
House of Salt and Sorrows
by Erin A. Craig
adventurous
dark
mysterious
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
Ok so update! I have been thinking about this book non stop for the past week, and I’m going to raise my rating to 4 stars (probably a 3.75 on StoryGraph). It was originally a 3.5, but I really do think it deserves more than that.
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*3.75
Well this was sure creepy and unsettling! I love “gothic” anything, and any book that is pitched to me as gothic is probably going on my TBR. So when I heard about this book being a ”gothic 12 dancing princesses retelling”, I knew I had to read it. The problem was, I let this one sit on my shelf since Christmas of 2019. Yeah, I might have to sort out some of my reading priorities…Anyways, after waiting so long to read this one, I was afraid I had just “outgrown” this book, especially from how young the description sounded. But I still kept it on my shelf, and I’ve finally read it. And yeah, despite the 3.5 star rating, I really enjoyed it.
The writing was great, and so was the plot. I was really into the mystery, and the overall atmosphere of the writing made this book 100% better. I loved how psychological and trippy this ended up becoming—something I really wasn’t expecting at all. This is a really mind-fucky book, and I always tend to really enjoy my time with those. Not only that, but the light body horror was fucking fantastic. Books like these really make me question why I don’t read horror books often.
But despite all of my positives about the story, I do think this book read a little young in some areas and I just personally wasn’t a fan. It was a little odd reading at times. Our FMC Annaleigh is sometimes wondering what boy she’s gonna pick in the subtle love triangle this book has going on, and then the next second she remembers her sister just died really fucking tragically. Like girl…get your priorities in check. Obviously this is YA, and I’m almost 17 so I’m not the exact target audience for this book anymore (cries in growing up), but it was really annoying sometimes for Annaleigh to be so focused on the romance between the two love interests, that she completely forgets the fucked up shit happening all around her. I don’t hate romance in books, in fact I’m usually seeking that out when I’m reading anything anymore. But I think the romance was just annoying rather than something I enjoyed in this one.
So I think that’s really what bothered me the most. The beginning of the book was very slow too, so it took me awhile to get into this. I was close to DNF’ing, but I picked up the audiobook from my library and we preserved on through. But yeah, like this is a solid YA fantasy-horror novel. I really enjoyed a lot of my time reading it, a lot more than I thought I would honestly. I’m interested to check out EAC’s sophomore novel since I’ve heard good things about that one too.
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My Gothic Book Playlist
* * *
*3.75
Well this was sure creepy and unsettling! I love “gothic” anything, and any book that is pitched to me as gothic is probably going on my TBR. So when I heard about this book being a ”gothic 12 dancing princesses retelling”, I knew I had to read it. The problem was, I let this one sit on my shelf since Christmas of 2019. Yeah, I might have to sort out some of my reading priorities…Anyways, after waiting so long to read this one, I was afraid I had just “outgrown” this book, especially from how young the description sounded. But I still kept it on my shelf, and I’ve finally read it. And yeah, despite the 3.5 star rating, I really enjoyed it.
The writing was great, and so was the plot. I was really into the mystery, and the overall atmosphere of the writing made this book 100% better. I loved how psychological and trippy this ended up becoming—something I really wasn’t expecting at all. This is a really mind-fucky book, and I always tend to really enjoy my time with those. Not only that, but the light body horror was fucking fantastic. Books like these really make me question why I don’t read horror books often.
But despite all of my positives about the story, I do think this book read a little young in some areas and I just personally wasn’t a fan. It was a little odd reading at times. Our FMC Annaleigh is sometimes wondering what boy she’s gonna pick in the subtle love triangle this book has going on, and then the next second she remembers her sister just died really fucking tragically. Like girl…get your priorities in check. Obviously this is YA, and I’m almost 17 so I’m not the exact target audience for this book anymore (cries in growing up), but it was really annoying sometimes for Annaleigh to be so focused on the romance between the two love interests, that she completely forgets the fucked up shit happening all around her. I don’t hate romance in books, in fact I’m usually seeking that out when I’m reading anything anymore. But I think the romance was just annoying rather than something I enjoyed in this one.
So I think that’s really what bothered me the most. The beginning of the book was very slow too, so it took me awhile to get into this. I was close to DNF’ing, but I picked up the audiobook from my library and we preserved on through. But yeah, like this is a solid YA fantasy-horror novel. I really enjoyed a lot of my time reading it, a lot more than I thought I would honestly. I’m interested to check out EAC’s sophomore novel since I’ve heard good things about that one too.
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My Gothic Book Playlist