House of Roots and Ruin by Erin A. Craig
Despite dreams of adventure far beyond the Salann shores, eighteen-year-old Verity Thaumas has remained at her family’s estate, Highmoor, with her older sister Camille, while the rest of their family has scattered across Arcannia.
When Verity receives word that the Duchess of Bloem - wife of a celebrated botanist - is interested in having Vertity paint a portrait of her son, Alexander, Verity jumps at the chance, but Camille won’t allow it. Forced to reveal ithe secret she’s kept for years, Camille tells Verity the truth one day: haunted by tragic childhood events, Verity is still seeing ghosts, she just doesn’t know it.
Stunned, Verity flees Highmoor that night and. - with nowhere else to turn - makes her way to Bloem. At first, she is captivated by the lush, verdant landscape and is quickly drawn to the charming, witty, and impossibly handsome Alexander Laurent. To her surprise, a romance… blossoms.
But it’s not long before Verity is plagued with nightmares, and the darker side of Bloem begins to show through its sickly-sweet facade.
~~~~~
The sequel to House of Salt and Sorrows left me… unsettled. I’ll be up front about my opinions on this book, the first should have remained a standalone. We follow the youngest sister, Verity, in this book who was only six years old in the last one. She’s been kept safe and hidden away at her family’s estate and therefore, we follow in the point of view of an extremely naive and childish main character. It could get unbearable at times reading through her small tantrums and horrid reasoning. I usually love anything this author puts out but this book just felt way too forced. I think stand alone books are where Craig thrives and I’m not sure a sequel was needed in this case. I loved the concept of this dark twisty family with secrets similar to her own, however even knowing this was a horror, the botany/genetics themes left me a little rattled. I also felt the dialogue and romance all felt so forced and it really took away from the experience. It felt very middle-grade fiction in those instances compared to her other stories yet had more adult themes in this one than any others which could be pretty inappropriate at times given this was a YA novel.
The entire book is from Verity’s perspective so the mystery builds up quite well given we only have one perspective. Luckily for us, Verity is naive and a bit unobservant so the mystery is kept pretty well under wraps and the twists still manage to surprise. Verity is tired of being kept under lock and key by her eldest sister Camille and once it’s revealed she can still see ghosts from their families old curse, she runs away. As she tries to find a home at Chauntilalie, weirder and weirder things begin to happen and she has a hard time differentiating what is reality and what is actually her curse. This is where it becomes frustrating as, it’s painted as pretty clear and obvious to the reader that these things are really happening but yet we still must play the charade of being as oblivious as Verity for a good part of the book. I think the author making this character as naive as she was became the downfall of the book.
Let’s discuss the love story. Craig’s books always feature a major love story subplot and, honestly, that’s one of my favourite things about her books. It’s done so well with the horror themes by making us fall for the main love interest along with the main character while still suspecting he might be the root of all problems in the book. This book broke that mold and I didn’t enjoy it. We get an almost instant love between Alexander and Verity and half the time even Verity herself is convinced that she’s only going along with it because she was so desperate to build her own life outside that of her family. Because of this I had a really hard time caring what happened between these too. Yet, given all this, there were some pretty graphic romance descriptions for this being considered a YA novel, I was a little shocked to be honest and felt that, if she was willing to upgrade this book enough in the New Adult territory for those scenes, then why not change the rating altogether and do the horror elements of this story the same favour? I also never believed for a single moment that Alexander was a suspect character no matter how good the argument was as he was just too bland and uninteresting.
The horror aspect of this was ok. There was definitely body horror included in this which I thought was a little dark for YA but it wasn’t too explicit so it worked well. I’m very uncomfortable, however, how eugenics was handled in this. It’s a horrific topic either way you spin it so I understand why horror authors continue to include it in their works but I’m not sure that the right consideration was used when discussing these topics. nor was this a trigger warning anywhere I looked. And even with a disabled main character, there was still a lot of ableism in the book that didn’t feel like it was confronted, just presented there as a fact of life that we all need to deal with/accept so I didn’t feel like the representation was very good. The plot of this book was a great concept, but it wasn’t executed as well as it could have been.
Overall, I wish I’d never read this book as it did slightly taint the first one for me. If you absolutely loved these sisters you might enjoy this sequel but for me, I’d prefer if it were a standalone like Craigs other novels. I was interested enough in the plot to give this 3 stars but I definitely feel it could have done better if categorized right (ie. I don’t think it would have been as shallow/cheesy if it were meant to be adult but I feel like the author held back on some major themes due to it’s YA classification).