House of Salt and Sorrows

June 1, 2019
Mysterious deaths plague an island dukedom in a loose retelling of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses." Annaleigh Thaumas has spent the last few years mourning her mother and several sisters, who died in succession under increasingly eerie circumstances. Her remaining sisters chafe under the lifestyle restrictions of formal mourning on their small, isolated island home, especially their inability to wear pretty clothes and flirt with boys. When their young stepmother persuades their duke father to let them wear bright colors and start dancing again, Annaleigh and her sisters are relieved, especially when a mystical door in the family crypt conveniently transports them to glamorous ballrooms that provide venues to show off their new wardrobes. Annaleigh and her sisters read like interchangeable paper dolls, their painstakingly described gowns, jewels, and shoes the most distinguishing features about them; they spend their time screaming, swooning, and alternately competing for and cowering behind the men in their lives. The island setting is extremely one-note, as if an ocean-themed children's party became an entire culture, and there is no consistent interior logic to the rules of magic and gods that seem to shift, like the tides and the weather, according to narrative convenience. The writing is self-consciously stiff, and the story reads like a mood board, full of repetitively atmospheric images and scenes but never creating a substantive whole. All characters are white. More about costume than character or story. (Fairy tale retelling. 14-18)

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June 24, 2019
Evocative details and lyrical, moody prose distinguish this tale—with strong allusions to “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”—of 12 sisters who seemingly fall under a curse, resulting in their deaths under tragic and violent circumstances over the course of several years. Debut author Craig stages the narrative in an enigmatic island realm set apart from the outside world and governed by a mythology that is connected to the ocean. The sisters (only seven remain when the story begins) live with their father and his significantly younger new wife at seaside manor Highmoor. Fearful of meeting fates similar to their siblings’, all but one sister, Annaleigh, seek refuge through pageantry and nights spent dancing until dawn (fairy tale–like details abound: velvet-draped ballrooms, extravagant “fairy shoes”). Craig offers a well-placed element of grotesquerie as the sisters become puppetlike pawns controlled by a malevolent force. Certain elements—including a duplicitous central character’s arc and the story’s budding romance—carry a degree of predictability, but these are minor distractions in an otherwise richly conceived story that blends mythic and Gothic storytelling. Ages 12–up. Agent: Sarah Landis, Sterling Lord Literistic.

July 1, 2019

Gr 8 Up-An accomplished first novel, equal parts gothic fairy tale and romance. Teenage Annaleigh and her seven sisters live in their ancestral house of Highmoor with their father and stepmother, the Duke and Duchess of the People of the Salt. Their family has been in near-continuous mourning for years after the deaths, one by one, of the girls' mother and four older sisters. Desperate for some happiness and an escape from their island community, the girls find a hidden passageway and begin a series of secret nights dancing their shoes into tatters at darkly splendid balls. The foreboding atmosphere intensifies, and eventually Annaleigh decides to forgo the parties and unravel the mysteries surrounding her family's ongoing tragedies. Loosely based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," the novel takes place in a 17th-century European-sounding world where an invented pantheon of gods guide, and sometimes afflict, their human devotees. The author's background in theater design surely contributed to Annaleigh's first-person narration as she tells the sisters' story in lavish visual detail. Well-described settings with rocky shores, obsidian fireplaces, and satin gowns bring this magical realm to life. Nuanced heroes and villains with complex backstories reveal their motives throughout the narrative, and the cause-and resolution-of the family's sorrows is both unexpected and thoroughly satisfying. VERDICT Compulsively readable, with sweet young love and truly creepy horror. First purchase for school and public libraries.-Beth Wright Redford, formerly at Richmond Elementary School Library, VT

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