Reviews with content warning for Death - The Salt Grows Heavy

Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

190 reviews

mijtje's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

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

3.75

”There is nothing wrong with being a monster”

This is a very, very dark and twisted alternative conclusion to the story of The Little Mermaid. After murdering her prince, she travels together with a plague doctor, running into a village of children they then try to save. It’s a beautiful (and disgusting) story about love in a horrible world, and refusing to give up on each other.

The writing, however, is pretentious. The author seems to have written it with thesaurus.com to replace all normal-sounding words with the most uncommon, obscure and complex alternatives she could find. Words with one vowel? Nope. Not in this book. Even my e-reader’s dictionary struggled to keep up.

It’s a shame, because underneath the overly complicated language, the writing itself is quite good and poetic.

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meg_thebrave's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

This novella is like reading gruesome, brutal poetry, turning a fairytale on its head. I loved it. I look forward to reading more of Khaw’s work.

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itsradsmads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

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

3.0

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vii67's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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laurenbookishtwins's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

"It is always interesting to see how often women are described as ravenous when it is the men who, without exception, take without thought of compensation."

A man-eating mermaid meets a non-binary plague doctor after her daughters have eaten their princely father and ravaged the kingdom, and together, they flee. On their travels, they stumble upon a cult of children who worship three saints and find themselves in danger. THE SALT GROWS HEAVY is The Little Mermaid meets Frankenstein, a grisly fairytale horror with heavy and poetic prose—trigger warnings: bodily horror, blood and gore, miscarriage, dismemberment, cannibalism.

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snackattackisback69's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

3.5

I adored the two main characters and the concept of this book. Paired with the impeccable writing it could have been a 5 star read for me if the book had not been so short. I wish even another 100 pages went into expanding the world or fleshing out the ending. Additionally there is a section at the end about a character's backstory that I feel would have fit better at the beginning. If you are interested in this book I would also check the trigger warnings as it is quite graphic.

Content Warnings