House of Salt and Sorrows

The novel’s blurring of reality and perception plays into its mysteries, with the Thaumas family allegedly dying to a curse and their world being home to supernatural forces. After eldest sister Eulalie’s wake, youngest sister Verity starts to see her deceased sisters’ ghosts; Annaleigh is bruised by the deceased Elizabeth and locked in a solarium by the deceased Rosalie and Ligeia. The people of Salann worship a sea god named Pontus, and Cassius himself is revealed to be a demigod, later bringing Annaleigh to his goddess mother’s healing waters after the solarium incident. Despite these incidents and partially because of the repetition of these incidents, when Annaleigh sees horrors at the magical balls, she questions her sanity:

The punch was made of blood. [...] The cakes and the trays were gone, replaced with butchered carcasses of fish. [...] Tentacles, long and ropy, flailed off the table, spiraling to the floor below. [...] Only I saw this. Only I smelled this. I was the only one who noticed any of this night’s horrors. [...] How was any of this possible? There is one way, a tiny, dark voice whispered in my mind. [...] None of this is real, it persisted. No one else sees it because it’s not really here to see. You’ve gone mad, my girl. No. That wasn’t it (306).

Annaleigh fights to maintain reason and continues to seek answers regarding her family’s curse, Eulalie’s murder, and the balls, among other mysteries. During her investigation, Edgar, Eulalie’s lover, seemingly dies by suicide after sharing information about the night Eulalie died—only for Eulalie’s ghost to later claim Annaleigh killed her. Like Verity, Annaleigh sees these visions but doesn't know they’re hallucinations crafted by Kosmaras, Harbinger of Madness and Nightmares. The ongoing mystery builds suspense and pushes readers to question Annaleigh as she does herself, as she is often alone when subjected to horrors—and others claim ignorance.

As the novel comes to a climax, Annaleigh and Camille catch their stepmother, Morella, in a lie and force her to confess. Through her own observations and Cassius’s talk of faraway lands, Annaleigh pieces together Morella’s deal with Viscardi, Trickster god of bargains, who then summoned Kosamaras to torment the sisters. The family isn’t cursed, but rather targeted by the supernatural forces of the world—as was the case for Rosalie and Ligeia, who froze to death due to Kosamaras’s illusions. Before this turning point, Annaleigh and her sisters never question the magical door in the Grotto or the balls. They assume the balls are real, taking place in different locations in the kingdom, but the balls are illusions grounded in the sisters’ own rooms. Despite learning the truth, Annaleigh fails to convince her family (who have long been manipulated) and nearly loses herself in anger when no one believes her or remembers Cassius exists:

Though it seemed clear Kosamaras was using Camille’s accusations to have me killed, maybe she was creating all this confusion to make me strike at Sterland first? Which meant Sterland hadn’t made the bargain…Or had she known I would jump to that conclusion and wouldn’t be able to kill him, thus protecting the dealmaker? Or, worse, was she putting these ideas into my head now, overloading me until I snapped? My temples pounded, my mind cycling through too many possibilities. How was I ever to know which was right? (354-57).

Based on her family’s reactions, Annaleigh starts to think she’s “gone mad” and questions Cassius’s existence as well. She’s confused but doesn’t give up trying to outwit Kosamaras. Readers are trapped in the same scenario, wondering how to parse reality and perception for themselves when the layered mysteries of the family’s curse, Eulalie’s murder, and the balls are all entangled in a web—which eventually points to Morella.