House of Salt and Sorrow by Erin A. Craig



Trigger warnings: This story is centered around a family and the daughters keep mysteriously dying off, so there are many characters mentioning death and suicide throughout the book. There's also on the page death and other grotesque scenes.

Synopsis: Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters, their father, and stepmother. Once they were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last—the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge—and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.

Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that the deaths were no accidents. Her sisters have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn't sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who—or what—are they really dancing with?

When Annaleigh's involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it's a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family—before it claims her next.


Review: House of Salt and Sorrow could have been an easy favorite, but the romance really killed it. I liked Annaleigh as a character, and her grief for her sisters felt genuine. Unfortunately, the other sisters felt generic. They were the standard girls who only care about dressing up and getting married. Especially Camille. It made the sisters blur together for me and it was hard to tell them apart. It's set in a historical, coastal town but I didn't feel the atmosphere as well as I would have liked. The romance was also unnecessary, and I honestly forgot Cassius even existed because he disappeared for 1/3 of the book.

The plot itself was predictable, but still interesting. While I didn't like any of the characters, I thought the creep factor was done well. Even when I would read this at work, with the lights on, there were some scenes that made me shiver. While I wasn't on board with the way Erin set up her world or characters, I think she writes compelling ghost stories. I honestly would have rated this lower, but I liked seeing Annaleigh struggle with her sanity and understanding the world around her.

Poor characters, but interesting ghost elements.

3 howls

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