The themes got all blurry, not exactly making neither the action better, nor the characters, which is not great if you give it a thought or two. Just saying.Įven though the story somehow manages to become more gruesome (it’s labelled as horror somehow?), I wished the plot was more substantial. There is something I find unappealing about the idea of someone being cursed and they acknowledging that and making it sound like a fabulous tragedy (“Oh, yes! I’m cursed! Cursed for life! And there is nothing to do about it! Nothing!! I’ll have to sit here and wait until this curse takes me too!”). 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.

Because who-or what-are they really dancing with? Her sisters 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. 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 cursed by the gods.ĭisturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that the deaths were no accidents. Once they were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls’ lives have been cut short. In a manor by the sea, twelve sisters are cursed.Īnnaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters, their father, and stepmother.

A house of salt and sorrows