Just Finished Reading House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

House of Salt and Sorrows is a 2019 young adult fantasy/horror/romance novel by Erin A. Craig...if the combination of those three genres within a single story sounds strange, please keep in mind that many of our famous old fairy tales do the same thing.  And this novel is a fairy tale in its own right as a family of twelve sisters finds itself in a nightmare as they begin to die through mishaps or illness, until when the narrative begins they are only left with eight, ranging from late teens to little girls.  Annaleigh, the second oldest survivor, is the story's protagonist as she tries to unravel the mystery of the most recent death of one of her sisters.  The family, headed by a widowed wealthy shipping magnate who has remarried, lives on an island within a chain of islands on a fantasy world where humanity is in pretty much the same technological state as in other fantasy works like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings.  The impression I got when I started it was that it was a mystery novel of sorts and that although in a fantasy setting the real world's parameters generally prevailed.  But as I read on, it became more and more clear that the author was prolifically adding magic, the paranormal...and ultimately supernatural mythological characters...into the mix.  To me as a reader I felt a little cheated as I was first presented with a situation and then the explanations at the end weren't remotely available to me until Craig decided to throw them into the story.  It also played with my sense of what was real and what wasn't...the reader needs to be able to have at least some anchor of reality to help navigate them through the book: it's a problem I also had with celebrated writer Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House.  But keep in mind that my subjective criticisms may not be the same as your own reactions, and you might really like this novel which seems to have met with widespread approval and enthusiasm.  In any event, I always appreciate a writer's efforts and I understand that Erin A. Craig is coming out with another book in 2021, which I intend to read...