Book Review — The House of Salt and Sorrows

 

Title: The House of Salt and Sorrow
Author: Erin A. Craig
Genre: YA Fairy Tale Retelling
Pages: Hardback 400
ISBN: 978-109848-3192-7
Opening Lines: "Candlelight reflected off the silver anchor etched onto my sister's necklace. It was an ugly piece of jewelry and something Eulalie would never have picked out for herself."

Rating

"Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Once there were twelve, but the loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last—the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge—and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is curses by the gods.

"Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that her sister's deaths were no accidents. The girls have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn't sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who—or what—are they really dancing with?

"When Annaleigh's involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it's a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family—before it claims her next."

~ Jacket copy

In the small seaside city, a "curse" plagues the house of Thaumas—taking the wife and daughters of a lord by the sea. While all of the deaths seems to either be from natural causes such as disease or tragic accident, both the people in the surrounding villages and those on the mainland question whether the lord and his previous wife suffer from a curse. Did he anger a god? Did he anger his patron god, Pontus? Each remaining girl—while extremely beautiful—becomes ineligible on the marriage market due to the rumors. Damned to become spinsters, the girls discover a mysterious door in the family's crypt, which leads to lands where their curse is unknown. And each night, the girls escape the manor house and dance all night long. However, despite the joy of being beautiful—and anonymous—bachelorettes, Annaleigh starts to question her sisters' deaths. When she starts to see the ghosts of her sisters and strange things happen around the manor, she also questions her sanity. In a small town by the seas, audiences meet the new Twelve Dancing Princesses.

Book Review — Hunted

Title:  Hunted
Author:  Meagan Spooner
Genre:  YA fairy tale retelling, fantasy
Pages:  Hardback, 374
ISBN:  978-0-06-242228-6
Opening Lines:  "We always know before the change comes.  When the storm approaches, we feel it in the thickness of the air, the tension in the earth awaiting the blanket of snow."

Rating

"Beauty knows the Beast's forest in her bones—and in her blood.

"She knows that the forest hold secrets and that her father is the only hunter who's ever come close to discovering them.

"But Yeva's grown up far from he father's old lodge, raised to be part of the city's highest caste of aristocrats. Still, she's never forgotten the feel of a bow in her hands, and she's spent a lifetime longing for the freedom of the hunt.

"So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there's no pressure to make idle chatter with vapid baronessas . . . or to submit to marrying a wealthy gentlemen.

"But Yeva's father's misfortune may have cost him his mind, and when he goes missing in the woods, Yeva sets her sights on one prey: the creature he'd been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance.

"Deaf to her sisters' protests, Yeva hunts this strange Beast back into his own territory—a curse valley, a ruined castle, and a world of creatures that Yeva's heard about only in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin—or salvation.

"Who will survive: the Beauty, or the Beast?"

~ Jacket copy

One of my coworkers suggested this book over winter break.  Unfortunately, despite teaching English, it is hard for me to sit down and commit to a book.  (Is it possible to lose my love of reading because of my job?)  Even though I have been reading through horror—slowly!—my husband suggested taking a break before I hit burn out.  Somehow, this book kept coming back to the forefront of my mind.  

For those of you who know me or have been following this blog, fairy retellings are one of my guilty reading pleasures.  However, many of them seem to follow similar tired tropes found in ever other retelling or YA romance and never dare to try something new.  Even though this is a Beauty & the Beast story, Meagan Spooner takes on elements from Russian fairy tales to add depth to her story.

In many ways, Hunted is like any other retelling—merchant father loses his fortune and ends up in the clutches of the Beast.  As a way to save her family, Beauty ends up becoming the Beast's prisoner and falling in love with him.  That is where the similarities end.  Yeva—to her family, Beauty—is her father's daughter.  She loves to hunt and craves the freedom found in the wood.  Despite the hardships it will mean for her sisters, Yeva is secretly happy about the loss of her father's fortune.  It means living in her father's hunting cabin in the woods. 

When her father's faithful hunting dog fails to come home without him, Yeva casts off all vestiges of status to become her father's savior.  However, she find something she does not expect—the Beast her father has talked about throughout her childhood.

At the onset, Hunted is a slow-burn.  Spooner does a wonderful job setting the stage for everything to follow; however, for fans of fairy tales, it is sometimes hard to slog through the known and familiar.  Hunted also lacks world building.  It relies on the character development of the Yeva and the Beast. 

The ending, while beautifully written, was expected due to the hints dropped by the author.  However, despite that, it was an amazingly rich story. 

Book Review — Poison Princess

Title:  Poison Princess
Author:  Kresley Cole
Genre:  YA post-apocalypse/romance
Pages:  Hardback, 369
Publisher:  Simon & Schuster, October 2, 12012
ISBN:  978-1-4424-3664-0
Opening Lines:  "She's so lovely, so fragile.  Those haunted eyes.  Those rosebud lips . . . they'll scream so prettily."

Rating

"Sixteen-year-old Evangeline "Evie" Greene heads a charmed life—until she begins experiencing horrifying hallucinations. When an apocalyptic event decimates her Louisiana hometown, Evie realizes her hallucinations are actually visions of the future—and the visions are still happening. Fighting for her life and desperate for answers, she must turn to her wrong-side-of-the-bayou classmate, Jackson Deveaux.

"With his mile-long rap sheet, wicked grin, and bad attitude, Jack is like no boy Evie has ever known. Even though he once scorned her and everything she represented, he agrees to protect Evie on her quest. She knows she can't totally trust Jack. But if he ever casts that wicked grin her way, can she possibly resist him?

"As Jack and Evie race to find the source of her visions, they meet others who have received the same call. An ancient prophecy is being played out, and Evie is not the only one with special powers. A group of teens has been chosen to reenact the ultimate battle between good and evil. But it's not always clear who is on which side . . ."

~Jacket copy

After reading Sarah's review, I couldn't get this book out of my head!  The whole concept seemed intriguing.  As with most books I want to read, our local library didn't have it.  So, as usual, I had to put in an ILL request.  And, once I was able to start reading it, I couldn't put the damn thing down!

Finally home after a summer-long stint in a juvenile mental institution, Evangeline "Evie" is looking forward to starting school and returning to a normal life.  She is eager to put the nightmares and weird hallucinations behind her, with the help of doctors, therapy, and medication.  However, just even everything seems to be starting to return to normal, her nightmares come back, strange visions haunt her in the middle of class, and the newest student, Jackson Deveaux, has caught her attention.

While still trying to determine what is true and keep her head down, the unthinkable happens: the sun's rays blast the earth, killing most of the population, plant life, and evaporating the water sources.  And that's when Evie realizes that her hallucinations were really premonitions of this horrible apocalyptic event and a coming battle.

In an effort to find the information locked in her brain after being institutionalized, Evie goes on a cross-country trek to find her grandmother.  Along with the help of Jackson and three other people, Evie will encounter some strange things that will shake the bedrock of what she's always known.
  

When I started this book, I wasn't even sure what to expect.  Aside from the apocalypse theme, some of the other elements took me by surprise.  Granted, after reading a the review that brought this book to my attention, I fully expected the tarot element; however, it goes way beyond that.  I felt that Cole did a good job trying to imagine what it would truly be like if the tarot did start coming to life, or was, in fact, already here.  In addition, she did a good job thinking about the impact that type of sun damage would have on the Earth and how people would react without law.

In general, I liked Evie okay.  She seemed to react to her circumstances the way a normal girl would have.  Even though she was fairly pampered, to me, that didn't really get in the way of her functioning.  However, that could be due in part of her mother's role.  That being said, I did find her rather dense and a little too vapid.  Also, it seemed as though Cole was trying to hard to make her an approachable stereotype—popular, pretty, but not overly conceited.

From the moment he rode into the picture, I really liked Jackson.  Yes, he is rather rough around the edges and a Byronic archetype, but he embodies every boy I loved as a teenager.  Even though I am an adult now, it's still hard to escape those nostalgic feelings.  Also, given his past, I felt he had a lot more depth than we are shown in the book.  The Cole's dialect writing for the Cajun kids—Jackson in particular—was wonderful and added a different element to the story.  Plus, I love me some good dialect ;)

It was neat to see Evie struggle with her role in the tarot and the coming battle.  I liked seeing that internal struggle with what she wanted to be and what she had to be.  However, her powers kept reminding me of Poison Ivy.  Nonetheless, it was rather spiffy.

With the things she will have to do later on, the next books will definitely be tense and pose different issues.  It makes me wonder if that's why the other characters weren't as fleshed out.  Also, with how it ended, I really wonder how Evie will handle her changing role.

Normally, I don't like the typical YA romance with vapid heroines: however, this one really caught my attention.  I love the whole aspect of the tarot coming to life, this ancient battle, and the apocalypse.  Yes, there were a lot of things in the book that were extremely predictable, but it kept me on the edge of my seat.  And, yes, I can see how the pre-apocalypse section of the book could be considered boring or useless.  All of that being said, I really, really enjoyed this book!  The imagery was beautiful, and I like the story.  Now I am eagerly waiting to read the next book in the series!  Kresley, please release it sooner than October!

Current Pages: 6748
Current Progress:

23/50 books

Book Review -- Matched

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Title: Matched
Author: Ally Condie
Genre: YA, romance
Pages: Hardback, 366
Published: 2010
Opening Lines: "Now that that I've found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night? My wings aren't white or feathered; they're green, made of green silk, which shudders in the wind and bends when I move -- first in a circle, then in a line, finally in a shade of my own invention."

"In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.

"Cassia has always trust their choices. It's hardly any price to pay to a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one . . . until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path no one else has ever dared follow -- between perfection and passion."

~ Jacket copy

Thoughts: I've read a lot of reviews that say this book is nothing but a poor copy of The Giver. Sadly, I have not read that book. However, that makes me already poor estimation of this book drop even more.

Cassia lives in a world where every decision is made for you. At the beginning of the book, she sees absolutely nothing wrong with this. It isn't until another picture shows up on her Match screen and then the death of her grandfather. This storyline has a lot of promise. I felt that Condie could have taken it a lot of different places and really fleshed it out. However, she just let the ball drop.

This book, in one word, was boring. The measly amount of action takes place within 10-20 pages from the end of the book. Granted, there are a few "tense" moments, but they are quickly overshadowed or glossed over. When Xander alludes to something BIG happening in their neighborhood, he just lets the ball drop and won't tell Cassia. There are many, many missed opportunities like this throughout the book. She never takes them, never fleshes them out. I feel that she really didn't care too much for the story.

I've read a lot of reviews that call this a dystopian novel. I have to disagree. This is purely romance. While it is set in a seemingly dystopian society, the book itself is not. Cassia laments the choices that are made for them, the threat of Infractions, the Aberration status, etc.; however, it lacks something to be truly dystopian.

I will read the next book, but I'm not holding my breath. This book got a lot of hype, but it just wasn't worth it. If people are looking for a dystopian novel that challenges societal constraints, try something like 1984 or The Giver. Those, at least, are well written.

Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆
Currently: Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey
Current Pages: 9970
Current Progress:

29/50 books