Devouring One Book After Another

House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

Date Finished: 10 Apr 2020 Format: Hardcopy Genre: Retelling, Fantasy, YA Briefly: Annaleigh and her eleven sisters were born at Highmoor, their family castle by the sea, and so far four of them have died there. Annaleigh is finding it harder to move on than the rest of her sisters, but they sneak out of the castle nightly to dance away the soles of their shoes at glittery balls; she, on the other hand, is haunted by ghostly visions of those who died, and becomes more and more convinced that there’s something sinister at work in her family. Aided by a mysterious, handsome stranger, Annaleigh is determined to discover why all her sisters are dying, and whether there’s a chance she can save the rest of them before she loses anyone else. Rating: ★★★★★    Notes:

**minor spoilers to follow**

House of Salt and Sorrows has its flaws - but I loved it so much I still gave it a 5 star rating

I am a sucker for the setting and descriptions in particular; this really is a spooky, gothic work of atmospheric art, hooking me from the first page, making me feel the spray of the ocean, and the wide walls and sharp cliffs of Highmoor 

I loved it too for its wide cast of girls - nine sisters, all of them, it seemed to me, with distinct personalities, shown to us through Annaleigh’s eyes as one who knows them all 

I love a grim retelling, and I really think this book did a great job with that, especially as it was wrapped up in the mythology of the land Craig’s created 

On this note, though, I wish that this element had been explained more, fleshed out in the ways it extends to the romance in the book 

I also am soured, as usual, by a love triangle 

But the experience of reading this book, the immersive telling of it, overrides these small complaints and makes this one of my favourite YA books I’ve read in a long while

The Whisper Man by Alex North

Date Finished: 7 Apr 2020 Format: Hardcopy Genre: Thriller, Horror Briefly: When Tom Kennedy moves to Featherbank following the death of his wife, the idea is to find a fresh start for himself and his young son, Jake. Tom didn’t know about the dark history of the town, about Frank Carter, a notorious serial killer who went down in Featherbank history as The Whisper Man. Carter is behind bars, but a new, shockingly similar child abduction in his old stomping grounds renews Det. Peter Willis’s long-held belief that he had an unidentified accomplice, and when Jake starts to report whispers at his bedroom window, Tom gets caught up in a terrifying rush to solve a decades-old case before it’s too late. Rating: ★★☆☆☆   Notes:

This book tries to do and be too many things, and in the last chapters, manages to fumble almost all of them 

It does manage to build suspense and atmosphere very well, especially at the beginning; I consider this to be, however, particular easy when you have children as your victims, raising the stakes considerably 

The different perspectives in the book are extremely reflective of the book itself, by turns undercutting and amplifying the tension in the novel rather inconsistently and without warning

In theory, I like the idea of tying up the supernatural with a mystery like this, and the execution throughout the book allows these two plots to augment one another

It also tries to be a reflection on fatherhood and intergenerational trauma, again very promising through most of the book 

Indeed, the relationship between Tom and Jake is far and away the most compelling part of the book

But those last chapters. In my opinion, they undo everything the rest of the book worked towards, turning what could have been a neat conclusion to the books’ themes into something messy and unfulfilled 

Not a bad thing in itself, unless, as in this case, it runs contrary to the rest of the pages in the book. 

Think we can just pretend those last 50 pages or so didn’t happen?