Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by NetGalley, and Macmillan Audio in exchange for an honest review.

The Salt Grows Heavy is enchanting, mythical and the darkest of fairytales. It almost gives the feeling of dreaming during your lightest cycles of sleep where you are somewhat aware it is a dream but still completely lost in dreamland.

It was an excellent read, and I am looking forward to being completely haunted by this author again!

This dark fairytale was strange and complex. A horrifying retelling of The Little Mermaid, it is written in beautiful, ornate prose that directly contrasts with the grotesque subject matter. Full of flayed flesh and crunching bones, I read this book with a grimace on my face, but unable to look away. (Be prepared for blood and gore… This isn’t your childhood Disney movie.)

I’ll admit that there were parts I suspect went way over my head during my first read through, either due to the elaborate prose (which Khaw is known for) or to references I did not fully understand. I went back for a second pass, and read along with the audio, which made this much more understandable and enjoyable.

At just 100 pages, it was bite-sized enough to read in a single sitting, but substantial enough to satisfy. With the same atmospheric quality as Khaw’s well known “Nothing But Blackened Teeth”, it is sure to entrance her fans and horror-lovers alike.

Full of lore and strange characters that seem not to belong to one another, this book was otherworldly in an unexpected and peculiar way. Part Little Mermaid, part Frankenstein, and part Lord of the Flies, this was unique to say the least, and very very intriguing.

If you enjoyed any of Khaw’s other works, or books like Langan’s The Fisherman, you will probably enjoy this. (Definitely check the content warnings first if you’re a sensitive reader.)

3.5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and Tor Nightfire for the advanced copies in exchange for an honest review.

The Salt Grow Heavy by Cassandra Khaw is a Blend of Dark Fantasy and Horror!

Fairytale or Nightmare?

A mermaid mother and her mermaid daughters with sharp teeth like hers, an androgynous plague doctor, ageless children, sinister surgeons, and everyone seems to be ravishingly hungry, in the weirdest way...

Are you curious yet?

Despite many readers not loving this author's last novella Nothing But Blackened Teeth I did enjoy it. It was atmospheric with characters that were a perfect blend between ridiculous and certifiable. It was creepy good fun, entertaining, and I was all in. I wanted more of it.

The Salt Grows Heavy is altogether different. You come to expect something dark and horrific from this author and it was definitely delivered again. The atmosphere feels apocalyptic, feral, and haunting. It felt like watching someone on hallucinogenics perhaps experiencing a bad trip. Not quite what I expected but absolutely creative and original.

The author's writing is repulsively beautiful prose that carries me through the story but often loses me along the way. The words did not always flow in a pleasing way so I didn't hear the music I was expecting or could have heard with much less effort from the author.

The Salt Grows Heavy audiobook was narrated by Susan Dalian and although her gender voicing was a bit muddled, her narration overall was enjoyable.

I don't believe I could have taken a larger dose of The Salt Grows Heavy. This portion was satisfyingly adequate and I recommend it to those readers who love Horror and Dark Fantasy!

3.25⭐

Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Cassandra Khaw for an ALC of this book. It has been an honor to give my honest and voluntary review.

The king and his kingdom is dead and burned to the ground the mermaids children has eaten the king and when the story starts the mother mermaid who was married to the king now travels with the plague doctor A man she is falling for it at one of their camping sites they say a young boy chased down another boy and murder him when the plague doctor confronts the boy he tells him the Saints will fix Justin who now seems to like dead on the ground being curious the plague doctor in the mermaid go deeper into the forest to the settlement of the boys and are taken a back at the reverance the other people in the little village show to the boy they watched murder the other but when the three Saints appear it seems the longer the mermaid and the plague doctor or in the village the stranger things get I’m going to stop my summary right here and say this is a very dart fairy tale and one that I love the way Cassandra Carr wrote her writing style it’s so different and so intriguing I listen to this all in one day and right after I received it it was so good and I thought the narrator did a great job setting the tone for the book in the weirdness that prevails before it’s over I love the slight romance between the mermaid and the plague doctor and how she compares him to her king who clearly was a bastard but I digress I love this book this is a total five star the Fairytail reteling it is so good if you’re into dark fairytales than you love this book I certainly did what an original concept for a retelling. I received this book from NetGalley and a publisher but I’m leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publishers for the listen in exchange for this honest review.

I love the idea of this gnarly mermaid, plague doctors and child cult. I love a dark, gory fantasy world and I feel this delivered on that front. I’m not sure I truly followed what was happening in this novella though. It was a little dense and tough for me to focus on. Maybe I need to give it another listen. I would definitely from this author again though.

A brief, grotesque books that riffs on The Little Mermaid to marry the fates of a mermaid on the run with her plague doctor companion. Chockful of body horror and medical torture, this book is not for squeamish and often feels like it is going more for shock than for reason.

A grotesquely romantic fever dream of a story, loosely inspired by the Little Mermaid. I would have liked to see this fleshed out into a longer story because it had a lot of really fascinating aspects but I did enjoy it in its slightly disorienting and bizarre brevity. This was my first time reading Cassandra Khaw but I’ll definitely be checking out their other works!

Author: Cassandra Khaw
Genre: Short Story/Horror
Format: Audiobook
Rating: 3.5

TW: Gore, body horror, cannibalism, child death, torture.

This was a fascinating novella. With the rich language (confusing at first in the audio format), Cassandra was able to explore a retelling of The Little Mermaid that is delightfully morbid and dark. It relies heavily on body horror, which will not be easy to stomach for many, but to me added to the macabre and eerie tone. I understand it was a novella, so I felt like I could have learned more about the plague doctor and the cult, but overall it was an absorbing story that I finished in one day.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillian Audio for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. The book publishes on May 2nd. 2023!

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for the opportunity to listen rage and review this audiobook which is available May 2,2023!

Mermaids, plague doctors, and a village of blood thirsty children. Check check and check! Oh my god y’al this audio book which is read by Susan Dalian is everything I needed in a horror fantasy novel. Epic quest, likeable characters, creepy atmosphere and some wicked dialogue. I have already preordered the book and the audiobook. I loved it that much! Run don’t walk run to get this amazing novel

This was a DNF for me.

The world building was too heavy for me to muddle, but the writing and, based on what my overtaxed brain could make heads and tails of, the world was fascinating.

If you're into high fantasy with a dash of horror this would likely be more your speed.

Weird dreams are made of this! Khaw combines the mermaid meeting a prince trope with a plague doctor that stumbles onto ageless children and creates some great horror! I loved the narration that matched the mood oft the novella perfectly. Thank you so much to Macmillan Audio for the ALC of this one.

I expect a spooky time when I pick up a Cassandra Khaw novella. Did not expect to be heavily attached to a carnivorous mermaid and a plague doctor. Finished this in one sitting and instantly wanted to start it again. I can't call it a dark romance but the love is there.
The audio was perfect for the second read. Lovely narration.

Thank you to NetGalley and the amazing publisher for the ARC of this title! I am so grateful to be auto-approved for this title!
I look forward to listening and reviewing. More to come!

“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.”

You know that feeling when you read a morbidly perfect folk tale? The ones with equal measures of gore, love, and sadness, that make you think, “yes, this is all I want to read for the rest of time”? That’s what The Salt Grows Heavy is 🖤

The story follows a mermaid and a plague doctor on an adventure after her daughters devoured the kingdom, leaving nothing left. If that’s not an indicator that these aren’t your mainstream mermaids, it should me. The mermaid of this tale is all teeth with a will as sharp as her mind, who’s journey takes her unexpected places.

I could’ve finished it in a day if I had the time.The story was well-paced and left so many crumbs of intrigue that it was hard to stop. It’s another story you just have to discover for yourself and allow yourself to fall in love with the macabre tones, the eerie setting, and beautifully-flawed characters.

I hope you pick this up and love it as much as I do.

Rating: 2.3 leaves out of 5
Characters: 2/5
Cover: 2.5/5
Story: 1.5/5
Writing: 3/5
Horror: 2.5/5
Genre: Horror/Fantasy
Type: Audiobook
Worth?: If this is your thing go for it

Want to thank Netgalley and publishers for giving me the chance to read this book.

I had been on the fence of listening to this audio and to be honest I should have listened to my guy on not getting it. It was as dead as the victims in this book. As lifeless and grayscaled. There were moments when things were a bit... spooky but it was mostly gore-ish and anything having to do with kids are a kinda... triggering.

I get the concept of the whole thing it just wasn't done as well as I would have hoped.

The Salt Grows Heavy is a beautifully written, multilayered, brutally dark fairytale. Think Brothers Grimm, not Disney.

We all know the fable of The Little Mermaid, but have you ever wondered what happened after she married the prince? Let's just say the happily ever after didn't last long, and everyone forgot that mermaids are monsters.

After her ravenous daughters devour the kingdom and burn it to the ground, our nameless mermaid flees with a mysterious plague doctor. The pair roam the mountainside until they stumble upon a fresh hell of seemingly bloodthirsty, ageless children and the three "saints" who watch over them. The pair must face their dark natures to make it out alive.

I am not sure how to articulate my feelings about this book, but know I loved it. The number of times I said damn over 112 pages is astounding. I think each person who reads this will take away something different. I don't think I even scratched the surface of the author's true meaning. After I finished, I wanted to immediately start again.

The Salt Grows Heavy will not be for everyone, and I encourage everyone to review the trigger warnings. This book contains graphic body horror.

I did this as an audiobook, and it was outstanding. The narrator captures the mermaid's voice perfectly.

Thank you to NetGalley, Tor Nightfire, and Macmillan Audio for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Three different stories, all irreparably skewered and vivisected, are stitched together to make one bloody, creepy, startling ode of a horror story in The Salt Grows Heavy. But as haunting and compelling as the story is, I didn’t pick this up for its story.

Because what makes this tale stick in the mind and the ribs and the craw isn’t the story nearly as much as it is the soaring, lyrical language in which it is told.

After repeated Disney incarnations, in the popular imagination The Little Mermaid is a romance with a happy ending, even though the original Hans Christian Andersen version was a lot more equivocal.

The Salt Grows Heavy takes that romantic tale and sieves it through a much gorier and grimmer lens – much like the original, unexpurgated Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Then it strips the skin from the story’s bones and makes it a whole lot bloodier.

This so-called mermaid did not leave the sea for love of any prince. She was captured by a rapacious king who kept her as his literal trophy wife through sorcery and brutality. When we first meet her, she has already had her revenge for decades of rape and torment. Her daughters, just as much monsters as their mother, have killed and eaten the entire kingdom.

She decides to leave those bones to her daughters, and set out on a journey. After all, the marrow has literally been sucked out of her revenge. But she does not travel alone. One brave or foolish soul, if not a bit of both, volunteers to accompany her. It is ‘her’ Plague Doctor, someone who has secrets of their own, hidden behind their profession’s iconic mask.

So they set off on a journey, two monsters together. For she is most definitely a monster, and the Plague Doctor is a patchwork creature not unlike Frankenstein’s monster, made of bits and pieces of dead things with a mind of their own.

What they find along their way is something that neither of them ever imagined. They find beauty, and love, and nature “red in tooth and claw”, including their own.

But if the Plague Doctor is Frankenstein’s monster, then the doctor himself – or themselves – can’t be far away. With an entirely new – and even more rapacious – pack of monster acolytes to carry out their bloody, gruesome work.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up because I loved the author’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth, in spite of not being all that much of a horror reader. What I loved about that earlier book was the absolutely unholy lyricality of the language in which the story was told. It was horror as poetry and it captured me from the very first.

Therefore, The Salt Grows Heavy is one of the very rare occasions where I picked a book, not for its story, but for the language in which that story is told; haunting, creepy and beautiful at the same time.

The story combines The Little Mermaid, Frankenstein, and The Lost Boys (both the movie and the original Peter Pan interpretations fit) by sticking them into a blender, bones and all, and watching the blood fountain up as the blades gnaw at their meat.

It wasn’t quite as cohesive a story as Nothing But Blackened Teeth, but as I was listening to it, that didn’t matter AT ALL. I was so caught up in how she was describing EVERYTHING that I couldn’t stop listening – no matter how gorge inducing the scene she was describing might have been.

But I discovered, as I did with Nothing But Blackened Teeth, that the story lost its punch for me when I attempted to finish by reading the text. It wasn’t half so compelling a story in my head as it was when I felt myself inserted into the head of that misnamed mermaid.

So even when we see the even awfuller stuff coming – when she sees it coming – it was her voice that allowed me to let it come and let the experience play out to its bloody, bittersweet end.

The Salt Grows Heavy is a tale to be listened to with rapt attention – with ALL the lights on.

This is a easy 3 star novella for me

Be sure to check the CW/TW for this one
I think this is a perfect length novella that really almost needed a dictionary to keep up with some passages
Mostly because I have an audio ARC and the book itself is vague. Also not vague at all????
I think this was good but could have been better.
I like the take on Mermaids.
The cult I would like to know more about and I think I would have enjoyed a physical read better.

The cover though is perfection

The Plague Doctor is the character I think we want more backstory for. They were endlessly intriguing




Thanks to
the author
The publisher
The narrator
&
Netgalley
For the chance to read this This is a easy 3 star novella for me

Be sure to check the CW/TW for this one
I think this is a perfect length novella that really almost needed a dictionary to keep up with some passages
Mostly because I have an audio ARC and the book itself is vague. Also not vague at all????
I think this was good but could have been better.
I like the take on Mermaids.
The cult I would like to know more about and I think I would have enjoyed a physical read better.

The cover though is perfection

The Plague Doctor is the character I think we want more backstory for. They were endlessly intriguing




Thanks to
the author
The publisher
The narrator
&
Netgalley
For the chance to read this

This horror novella is both gruesome and beautiful. It's very fast paced and heavy on body horror, which is something that normally puts me off but in this case it is written so poetically that I didn't mind it. That's not to say this doesn't maintain it's horror well because it very much does. Just be prepared before going into it that there will be a lot of gore.

3.5/5

Thank you Netgalley for providing a digital ARC.

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw is a horror novella heavy laden with prose. The story is short and a bit hard to follow. It is interesting to use such beautiful descriptive language for such horrendous acts. Very heavy on the body horror and mutilation of people including children. This was an interesting read, but it left be feeling confused.

The narrator was a perfect fit for this audiobook and the pacing was great.