Book Review: House of Salt and Sorrows

House of Salt and Sorrows
Erin A. Craig
4/5

I really love books that take fairy tales and give them a unique twist. But more than that, I like books that take fairy tales that aren't as mainstream as a lot of the latest rewrites. House of Salt and Sorrows takes the Twelve Dancing Princesses and gives it a paranormal/mythological twist, and it's creepy. It's the kind of the book that makes you question everything you're reading because you're losing track of what's real.

Annaleigh is a pretty good main character- for the most part. She's nice, but she's also prone to outbursts like anyone would be in her situation. She doesn't let people get away with things but she isn't cruel, it works in her favor in the end to have a reasonable amount of doubt and paranoia. Her sisters mostly annoyed me, I did appreciate their relationships with each other, which is what annoyed me about the ending. I don't think that sisters brought together through tragedy and turmoil would turn against each other so fast, I wanted them to be more reliant on each other and their bonds.

The romance was the most annoying part of Annaleigh's arc. It was too insta-love for me, especially considering the ending and not knowing which parts of him were real and which parts were fabricated. Then the ending was super obligatory, the death and the return just felt pointless. The ending was my least favorite part, not bad enough to ruin the whole book, but still lackluster compared to how great everything else was.

This is fairy tales, ghosts, and mythology in a combination that you've never seen before. It has a lot going on but it's done so beautifully I would totally recommend.