Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - The Salt Grows Heavy

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.

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chrysanthxmum's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

4.25

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libraryoflanelle's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

W.T.F. Cassandra Kwah is a literary genius! In 128 pages, I laughed out loud, I threw up a little in my mouth, I kicked my little feetsies and I cried… I devoured this book, or did it devour me? visceral, shocking, perfection.

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_scvvter's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Considering the fact that I was able to finish this in two days when I'm a notoriously slow reader says a lot. It says even more the fact that the second day was literally when I first woke up in the morning says even more.

As I've been trying to get back into the groove of reading again, the two other short novels I picked for easiness has not been the best in my eyes. Started to make me think that I was not the biggest fan of short novels. But this completely changed my tune. A horrifying but exillerating ride from start to finish, Knaw's was able to easily suck me into the world with these character I grew quite found of really quickly. The plot had me on the edge of my seat, well more like bed, waiting to find out what's gonna happen to these characters. I was actually very nervous that the characters would actually not succeed and that was a great feeling to actually have from a novel.

On critique, if you can call it that, is that a lot of words flew over my head while reading this. Looking it up to find a lot of it be medical terms for the body, so be ready for that. And some other tiny things that I got over such as

It seeming like the main character got her toungue, which was cut out a while ago and was slowly growing, growing to normal size and her being able to speak like there was no problem.

Overall, absolutely loves this book and can't wait to look for more novels by Cassandra Know

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killerqueen45's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

2.5

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kaiyakaiyo's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Did not live up the premise! A lot of overly descriptive, borderline garrulous prose that amounted to very little substance, character building, or plot. it felt like they received a thesaurus for christmas from a loved one and wrote this book to prove they’d used it.

it got to the point where the sensorial detail even became repetitive; blood = rubies, entrails = coils/ribbons, bones = baby teeth… we get it! tons of words used over & over to the point where it almost felt like copy/paste. for a book so short it shouldn’t have been hard to come up with a word to replace “bathyal” instead of saying it over & over

neither of the leads were interesting. we were on the cusp of so many interesting details about “mermaid” lore, about human reanimation, the magical universe they are in, but the author chose to squander that on pages and pages of describing trees and skin and teeth. the romance had potential to be interesting, but again… the author chose to focus on how everything smelled and tasted for some reason

also this was an extremely loose “fairytale retelling”; I was personally okay with that, but don’t come in expecting anything detailed in that regard. Khaw doesn’t really go into detail about anything that isn’t a texture or a taste

if style over substance is your jam, this may be for you! it is firmly not mine so 2 stars trending downward. I had a similar complaint with Nothing But Blackened Teeth, so I think this author is just on the Don’t Read list for me :/ kernels of really interesting but ultimately unrealized premise seem to be the lay of the land. spent the whole book waiting for Khaw to get into the story only for there not to be a story at

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leeghlee's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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sxndaze's review against another edition

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dark hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Tell me: is your joy sweeter for your knowledge of what it is like to die? Do you enjoy every sunset better? Or does it stain you, follow like the whisper of a nightmare that will not end with your waking?

Gorgeously written.

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