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Book Review: House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

cover art for House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

Delacorte, 2019

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1984831927

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

House of Salt and Sorrows is the strangest version of the fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” I have come across to date.

 

The Duke of Salten had twelve daughters. His wife died in childbirth with the last, and the girls have, one by one, died terrible deaths, until only eight of them are left: Camille, Annaleigh, Rosalie, Ligeia, Lenore, Honor, Mercy, and Verity (yes, there are some very Edgar Allan Poe-influenced names). I’ve seen some complaints about the lack of character development in the girls, but the original tale doesn’t make most of them more than placeholders.

 

Inheritance in Salten goes to the eldest child, regardless of sex. With the death of her sister Eulalie, whose funeral starts the book, Annaleigh, the narrator, is sixteen and now second in line to inherit, after Camille. Annaleigh’s father has recently remarried a much younger woman, Morella, who is now pregnant with twin boys and decides that after years of mourning, another year set aside to mourn Eulalie is a year too long, and it’s time to put the black away.  She orders them special dancing slippers, and plans a party to invite eligible suitors. Annaleigh isn’t ready to set her grief aside, but she isn’t given a choice.

 

Annaleigh believes Eulalie was murdered, and investigates with Cassius, a young man visiting Salten, who is soon entangled in the family’s intrigues (he is also the required love interest for the main character in a YA novel). She also discovers her sister Verity has been drawing disturbing portraits of their dead sisters, insisting that she is seeing their ghosts. A rumor has spread that the girls are cursed, and though invitations to Morella’s party are accepted, no one wants to speak or dance with them. Frustrated with their situation, the girls look for a magical door, find it, and go through it to discover it is an elegant ball where they can dance all night.

 

Or is that really what’s going on? I can’t say more without spoiling the story except to say that Annaleigh is an unreliable narrator and this book is really dark, disturbing, and disorienting. I’m still unclear on how much of the ending was real. The grief in the book felt authentic and the author’s world building was incredible. Salten is on an island in the ocean, and the People of the Salt have their own customs and religious traditions. “Aesthetic” is a popular concept on social media right now, and the aesthetic for this book is what I’d call island gothic. The ocean and the tall cliffs of the island permeate everything. This is a very dark tale, and while it doesn’t get violent or disgusting often, when it does, the imagery is vivid, so it isn’t for everyone, but it may be a treat for those who like their fantasy drenched in darkness.  Recommended.

 

Contains: Images of and references to suicide, murder, body horror, childbirth, stillborn children,  sexual situations, violence, gore, sexual situations, blood, decay.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

 

 

Posted on June 26, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Two Truths and a Lie by Sarah Pinsker

Cover art for Two Truths and a Lie by Sarah Pinsker

Two Truths and a Lie by Sarah Pinsker

Tor.com, 2020

ASIN:B089FTG8MS

Available: Kindle edition  ( Amazon.com )

 

When her high school friend Marco’s “weird older brother” Denny dies, Stella offers to help clear out his things. Unbeknownst to her, Denny was a hoarder, and sorting through his things, even in just a few rooms, is a huge challenge, requiring latex gloves to go through his things and a mask to keep out the stench. Starting in the dining room, it is Stella’s job to sort the junk and broken things from the items that might be personal or potentially valuable.

 

Stella is a pathological liar. She doesn’t know why she does it, but she’s good at it. She lies about her job, her family, where she lives, what she’s done with her life… and she doesn’t get caught. While sorting through items in the basement rec room, such as DVDs, VHS tapes, and cassettes, she finds an old television set built into a cabinet and makes up a creepy kids’ television show from their childhood to ask Marco about, The Uncle Bob Show, only to discover that she didn’t make it up; it’s real, and most of the little kids in town appeared on it at some time, including her and Denny. Marco remembers it, Stella’s mother remembers it, and when she checks, there are records in the archives of the local television station. Stella is unnerved: if she can’t remember the show despite the nightmarish stories Uncle Bob told on his show, what other memories could she be missing?

 

This is a very short piece on the dangers and nature of storytelling and memory, but so well done. Pinsker doesn’t waste a word in this unsettling tale. While most of the characters are sketches, Denny and his house are vividly recreated, and the realization of how unreliable Stella’s narrative actually is makes the story even creepier. How much of what and who in the  is real and how much is in her head? Readers will have this crawling around their brains well after the last page is turned.

 

As a final note, it would certainly be interesting to see Pinsker revisit some of the other grown children who appeared on the Uncle Bob Show, in connected novellas. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: Two Truths and a Lie is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction.

Posted on April 5, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: The Graces by Laure Eve

cover for The Graces by Laure Eve

The Graces by Laure Eve (  Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

Amulet Books, 2016

ISBN-13 : 978-1419721236

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

The narrator of The Graces is new to town, and ready to shed her old identity, including her name. The centers of attention at her school are the Graces, seventeen-year-old twins Thalia and Fenrin, and their younger sister, Summer. The Grace family has been entwined in the town’s history for generations, and there are rumors of witchcraft that surround them. They are a close-knit family that rarely let anyone into their circle, but, renaming herself River, she finds herself welcomed in. River herself is very closed off and rarely volunteers information about her life or family– she is always thinking about whether she has said or done the “right thing” to be accepted by the Graces, who she believes have a magical key to helping her solve her problems.

River, Summer, and a group of girls from school attempt to cast a love spell, which River secretly focuses on Fenrin. Developing a close friendship with Summer, who is her own age, River also attempts to create situations that will give her and Fenrin the opportunity for close contact, but these are always interrupted, and finally end in tragedy.

It’s easy to read the first part of this book and see the narrator as merely anxious, needy, and maybe a little manipulative, a wishful thinker swept up by a glamorous and mysterious family. The second part gives us a look under the surface of it all, and there’s where it starts getting disturbing, as there are some very unsettling powers that come to the fore.

There is a lot of suspension of disbelief required to buy into this book, but Eve keeps things erratic enough, with her unreliable narrator, and enough gaps between the real and unreal to keep a reader going. A couple of things are real flaws, though. The book uses a trope I loathe, of the “always absent but overprotective parents,” and the plot had some big holes in it that made the actions of certain characters very confusing, and led to an ending that was only partly satisfactory (there is a sequel, so hopefully some of that will be resolved in it). None of the characters are especially likable, but there’s enough intrigue and “fairy tale” atmosphere to appeal to a certain kind of teenage girl. Recommended.

 

 

 

Posted on September 22, 2020 by , Reply
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