The Salt Grows Heavy

3.75/5

No, we are not very different at all, even if one is fashioned with thread and dried sinew, the other cleaved and then conjugated by magic.

A siren and a plague doctor travel the land together, walking away from destruction and right into something sinister in the middle of the woods. This is a strange book to summarize or even describe. It felt more like an event or a landscape. I think you'll either like this or absolutely despise it, no inbetween.

Beautiful yet challenging prose. At times I felt like I was wading through a swamp whenever the author threw these complex and uncommon words (not helped by the fact that English is my second language). Very vibes but with a lot of thoughts. I would highly recommend checking trigger warnings for this one, you'll find everything from cannibalism to child death to graphic gore. Ultimately I liked it but I felt cheated by the length, like a meal missing its main ingredient.

This was such a unique story, told from a very unique perspective. I would have loved for this to be a little longer, to offer a bit more backstory to these two very interesting characters. I don’t dip my toes into fantasy that often, so this was a bit of a different read for me, which was pretty refreshing. My only real qualm with this story was the fact that there were phrases constantly used throughout that felt a bit redundant. We can only hear about “sinew” a couple of times before getting tired of hearing about it. That being said, the rest of the story was compelling and I’m so glad that I gave this story a chance.

awful. just awful. for a horror/creepy book there is literally no horror. it’s hard to follow the story since she uses ridiculously fancy words for five minutes straight to describe a single event. the event is a character laughing and you get “my lungs filled with air to exhale a sound like screeching resembling the joy of a child on a sunny day in the park” .. obviously a joke but what is the significance of doing this. honestly could’ve been a great story but the writing style lost me, glad I bought it as an audio book and not the actual book.

Amazing. Messed up and in prose but amazing

This story was beautiful. I enjoyed that one of the main characters was a mermaid and that they weren't Disney-fied. There where a lot of words used that aren't normally used unless you read a lot, so I can see that being off-putting to a lot of folks. Otherwise the story was well told. I must say if I had read this book I would have given it 4 stars, but that Susan Dallian narrated this story made a difference.

I do wonder what it is to find someone to love like that. I both hate & love that this book made me cry, as I normally don't have the ability to cry over such things as love stories.