Since today is 端午节 (Duan Wu Jie; dragon boat festival), I thought it would be fitting that I review a rather dark and watery book. If you haven’t heard of Duan Wu Jie, one of the legends surrounding it involves a man named Qu Yuan, who was a minister during the Warring States period. Qu Yuan advised the emperor on a military alliance, but the emperor refused to listen to him and sent him into exile. Unfortunately, the emperor should have listened to Qu Yuan because his kingdom fell and when Qu Yuan heard what had happened, he threw himself into the river. To rescue his body, people raced there on boats and when they couldn’t save him, they threw sticky rice so the fish would eat that instead of Qu Yuan’s body, leading to the practices of Dragon Boat Racing and eating Zongzi.

Similarly, House of Salt and Sorrows is a dark and watery book. I first heard about it from Em @ The Geeky Jock and I really like fairytale retellings so I thought the book sounded good, since fairytale horror isn’t something you see every day.

House of Salt and Sorrows is a somewhat faithful retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. I say somewhat because at the start, I wasn’t sure if it would have any similarities with the story, given that there were only eight sisters remaining. But then there were the shoes, there was the dancing, and even a challenge to find out what was going on. So it ended up hitting most of the tropes.

What I really liked about the book is that it started with a mystery – why are the Thaumas sisters dying at such an alarming rate? For Annaleigh, it cannot be because of a curse. Not when her youngest sister sees the ghosts of her departed sisters around the house, and definitely not when the man claiming to be her departed sister’s secret fiancé also dies under mysterious circumstances.

I think Annaleigh was a great protagonist for the book – she’s smart and determined, but is also kind enough to reach out to her stepmother who seems to be a rather unlikeable airhead. The only thing I wasn’t a fan of was how there was a brief (rather pointless) love triangle. I’m not a fan of romance and the book already has the instalove trope so I was not impressed with the romance subplot. Give me more death and horror, please.

Speaking of horror, I liked that aspect of the book! It was very atmospheric and pretty gruesome at times. I definitely got chills reading the book. I think the writing was definitely one of the strong points of the book and it definitely makes the book stand out from other retellings, which tend to be lighter (in my memory, anyway).

Overall, I really enjoyed this! I love the use of magic and the creepy atmosphere of the people of the Salt and I love that it’s basically centred around a murder mystery. Definitely a fun read!