The Twelve Dancing Princesses… I have to be honest, I never read the original fairy tale. My knowledge about this specific topic is pretty much because of Barbie. (😂)
I read a quote in Goodread before I started this book that increased my excitement… «Barbie walked so this book could run» it was true, at least at the beginning of the story, because sadly not everything was perfect.
This book is crazy dark, so it was a little bit difficult to link the story with the actual fairy tale it was based on, but since is a retelling, I wasn’t expecting the same details, but was a huge surprise how dark this story was.
So, before I start pointing all the aspects I would like to talk about this story, let me tell you what is House of Salt and Sorrows. Ok, we have a huge family, twelve sister that are probably cursed, because they’re dying. 4 sisters and the mother are death and each death was more tragic than the other one, so as a result of this, the community in the village suspect the family was cursed by the gods. Our main character, Annaleigh, believes all deaths were not accidents. Here, it what all the «dancing princesses» part have some sense… the sisters have been sneaking out pretty much every night to attend balls, and Annaleigh doesn’t know what to do, stop her sisters or join them, because who are their sister dancing with? (or what?)
So pretty much we have a lot of dark elements involve, curses, ghosts, murder, killers… yes, it is a scary and spooky book, which is for me the greatest part of this book and the main reason I finished it. To be honest, it went downhill at the end, and I definitely started to lose interest. I think there was a lot of hype around this book, but the only part I have to admit it was good was the horror, and still, I think it was just ok!
Half to the end of the book it wasn’t I was expecting, I think I had a lot of theories in my head and I was a little bit disappointed but I didn’t hate completely the thing, I mean, seriously, it was disturbing and intense and crazy. Not a fairy tale at all, but the baby of any other Stephen King book.
I mean, I’m not a huge fan of horror and sometimes this book was crazy creepy… like, a bath tub full of blood and some weird ink… yes, no thanks. But if you enjoy horror and creepy stuff in general, I think is a great read, and you’ll definitely enjoy it.
3/5 ⭐️
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