Blood and Salt is in the horror/romance genre written by Kim Liggett.
This story follows Ashlyn “Ash” Larkin, the daughter of a cult escapee, as she hunts down her mother to the cornfields of Quivira, Kansas with her brother, Rhys. All her life, Ash has seen visions of a girl hanging by her ankle from the ceiling. Haunted by this ghost girl and surrounded by fields of mysterious corn, Ash struggles to protect her brother and her mother from a village of people who believes in immortal witches and their dead lovers, crow omens, and strange deaths all while battling feelings for a boy she can never love.
This book is another book I really wanted to love. I haven’t read very many thriller books like this one, so reading it was branching out a bit to me. It looked interesting and followed a “Children of the Corn” trope that I always wanted to read.
However, I was massively disappointed. Too many thrillers these days are less thriller and more romance. Now, I’m a sucker for a good cliche-filled romance story, but not so much in the middle of my magic-filled demons and death story. The romance in “Blood and Salt” is very “Romeo and Juliet” which I also usually enjoy, however, I think the author played far too heavily on the relationship between Ash and Dane.
I really enjoyed the first few chapters of the book. Starting the book with “The dead girl hung upside down over our kitchen table” was a great way to pull readers in. The book was going really well; the plot was understandable, the characters outside the Larkin family (Katia, Coronado, Alfonso, etc) and their motives made sense, the writing was decent, the magical system even seemed understandable.
The plot gets muddy and kind of confusing farther down the line, but not in the way you want your thriller to get confusing. It was a complete “I’m lost” rather than “I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but I’m going to keep reading to find out” kind of way.
Other than the romance and the confusing plot, I really enjoyed the characters. I didn’t actually hate Ash or Dane, despite not being overly interesting in their relationship. All the other characters were interesting and had very clear, precise motives that made them easy to sympathize with.
There is a plot twist, like every good book has, that I actually didn’t see coming and really enjoyed. It gave the book a new flavor, but it was too near the end to really save it for me.
If you’ve already read the book and looking for my full opinion, read the spoiler-filled review below.
Spoilers ahead! Beware!
However, as soon as Katia’s character was introduced, things started to go downhill. I was really confused about what was happening from the get go. Maybe that was my fault of not paying well enough attention, but I was really unaware of what was going on.
Still, I wanted to like this book. So, I kept reading.
I realized that I wouldn’t like this book, or at least the romance portion, as soon as the love interest, Dane, was introduced. Lines like “‘Oh, it’s not my blood,’ I said with a nervous laugh” and “He pulled me close, whispering in my ear. ‘You’d never want to leave.'” made me so incredibly uncomfortable it’s difficult to describe, especially when the two had just met a few pages prior.
There was supposed to be a chemistry between them that was deep, a connection buried in their souls that cannot be broken. Whenever I was reading the scenes between Ash and Dane though, it felt like I was watching the edgy couple at school making out in front of my locker. I couldn’t get through a single one of their scenes without cringing at least once. Whether it was their awkward dialogue or their strange physical interactions or Ash’s consistent insisting that he smells good, their relationship was a big ‘NO’ for me.
My least favorite interactions between them was definitely whenever Ash had her visions and Dane said her name, pulling her away from the vision. For some reason, Dane seemed to think he needed to explain that him looking in her eyes (something about that statement alone makes me cringe) and saying her name was the only way to pull him out of the vision. I don’t know why he needed to say it at all (let alone every single time it happened)
The characters themselves weren’t all that bad. I actually really enjoyed Rhys and Beth’s characters (Beth being a child born into the corn-centered cult). I wish that the book was more about them than it was about Ash and Dane. Rhys’ position throughout the book was understandable. His motivations made complete sense to me. (On a side note, when he went into the women’s shower at the beginning of the book, I was so uncomfortable, especially when the other women started to undress Ash. That really made no sense to me Why didn’t he just leave? Author, why didn’t you let the poor boy leave?). His relationship with Beth was cute. I thought they were good together and was 100% more reasonable and less cringey than Dane and Ash.
Beth was an extremely intriguing character. I think she was probably my favorite. She reminded me of Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. I don’t remember if it ever explained what her accident was, which is kind of disappointing, but she was really sweet. I really liked her relationship with Rhys, but I also really like her relationship with Dane. Their brother/sister friendship was sweet. It may have been a little cliche, but what is life without some good, wholesome cliches? She also reminds me of a character from a Webtoon called “Where Tangents Meet” on LineWebToon. The character is called Rachelle and her story is pretty similar to Beth’s.
The other characters, such as Brennon, Lauren, Marie, Ash’s mother, and Coronado were pretty intriguing. Lauren herself was irritating at first because I thought she was the typical “jealous of you because you’re trying to steal my man” character, but when I found out that she wasn’t in love with Dane, I had spent so much time disliking her that I almost didn’t care. However, disliking characters because of their personality and disliking a character as a character. I liked Lauren as a character, I just would hate to be around her.
The plot was muddy and confusing. There was so much going on, both in the past (with Alfonso, Katia, Marie, and Coronado) and the present, (with Ash, Dane, Rhys, and Beth), that it was really difficult to understand what was going on. I could never really understand why Ash was going in and out of the corn, why it was important, what had happened in the sacred circle, or how exactly Katia, Aiyanna, Coronado, Alfonso, the Great Spirit, and the Black Spirit were all connected. There was too much happening in one book for me to sift through.
I really did enjoy the twist with Katia being evil and her killing Marie instead of Coronado. I really wasn’t expecting it, but I was so confused by everything else that it fell a little flat for me. All the while, making Coronado the semi-good guy and Katia the definite bad guy was something I hadn’t expected.
Perhaps my least favorite part beside Dane and Ash’s relationship would be Ash and Rhys’ powers. I don’t think they added anything to the story. It was just another thing that was thrown in there that wasn’t necessary. It also makes Ash feel like a Mary Sue; she is the vessel of Katia, a conduit of Marie, a Larkin, blood bound the Dane (and therefore being able to use blood binding magic after never doing magic before), and now she has the ability to heal herself from things that should kill her (the femur through her chest. Side note about this, she shouldn’t have been able to talk let alone breathe if there was a femur in her chest, Wolverine abilities or no.) and others (Beth after Rhys kissed her). I know a lot of those things come from being a conduit and/or a vessel, but she was the Special One to end all Special Ones and I just wasn’t feeling it.
I have very mixed feelings about this book. Many of the characters were enjoyable, but the plot was confusing. It felt like the author was trying to cram too much into this one book. Not only that, but it fell flat in both the romance and the horror genres, which is extremely disappointing.
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Reminder: These are my opinions only! If you liked this book, feel free to tell me why. I hope you enjoyed!
Have a great day,
Caroline Noelle
Hebrews 12.2
