House of Salt and Sorrows

This is a retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses fairytale. I'm actually not familiar with that fairytale, but my suspicion is this novel is a lot more creepy than that tale. In fact the novel really excels in two area's. The horror elements are genuinely quite creepy. I'm not overly familiar with YA Fantasy Horrors, but I enjoyed those elements here a significant amount.

The second element which is really paired with the first is the atmosphere in general. The author is quite talented at painting the world. She does a great job making you feel like everyone is really on this rocky, cold, island that survives off the sea. The type of place where the smell and taste of salt permeates everything. 

The plot lands slightly below these two for me as I was quite enjoying the mystery build up, but it did start to become quite predictable. I'd still say it was enjoyable though just because of the horror type elements through out it. I didn't really care much for the romance plot lines though. Extremely cheesy stuff...

The real let down for me though is the characters. The sisters for the most part are just slight variations on the same person. They are vain and boy crazy. Those are for the most part, the two things that define them. The only two exceptions are the main character, who is defined by one extra trait, and the youngest who is far too young to be interested in boys or status. If you took the name's out of the book, I legitimately don't think I'd be able to say which one was speaking at any given moment. I wouldn't say I enjoyed any of the other characters either outside of perhaps Fischer.

I enjoyed the creepy story/atmosphere enough though that this still hit a 3/5 for me.