A Sweet Sting of Salt: A Novel | 
pickA Sweet Sting of Salt, by Rose Sutherland (2024 🇨🇦)
Premise: A queer take on the Selkie Wife legend set in 19th C Nova Scotia
Review: This is a legend ripe for a postmodern retelling, and this works really well. I loved the main character and her found family, and the selkie wife herself more than holds her own in a frightening situation. It‘s not perfect but a great read nonetheless.
This queer historical retelling of The Selkie Wife manages to combine a sweet sapphic love story while also examining the horrors intrinsic to stealing a selkie‘s skin to get a wife. And the audiobook narrator was the perfect voice for this!
#12BooksOf2024 @Andrew65
September was another great reading month but A Sweet Sting of Salt stands out the most—beautiful & evocative, it‘s my #12BooksOf2024 pick.
Honorable Mentions include: The Flight Portfolio, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy & A Sorceress Comes to Call.
The first three books I picked from @DebinHawaii #AuldLangSpine list. I can‘t decide where to start. They all sound really good. @monalyisha
What a perfectly lovely #Jolabokaflod present this Christmas Eve! Thanks you so much @Jadams89 and give your cat scritches from me!
Many, many thanks again to @MaleficentBookDragon for setting up such a wonderful swap!
pickI'm wishing I hadn't finished it as quickly as I did.
I absolutely loved every tense atmospheric minute of reading this as Jean's friendship with Muirin leads to questions, leads to wondering, leads to hope, and to love while putting everything at risk for the women.
A fantastic retelling of The Silkie's Wife with a great amount of slow build, tension, yearning, and historical nods.
#pantone2024 #popsugarreadingchallenge
pickMidwife Jean helps her neighbor‘s new wife deliver a child, only to learn that all may not be well in the house. There are too many secrets, & Jean only wants to help. But she may end up losing more than her heart.
This was absolutely gorgeous! The scene setting was lush, the reimagining of the selkie myth was heartbreaking, all the characters were so interesting, the queer love was so lovely. In my top 5 reads of the year, no question.🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗
pickThis was way better than I expected! I don‘t even know why I had low expectations, maybe that‘s just been this book groups luck lately…. But a queer historical tale based in selkie folklore…. I loved the build up!
pick#ReadAway2024
I stayed up far too late for someone who has to be at the airport early tomorrow morning, but I did manage to visit my last book of September before midnight. I‘ll post my September recap in the morning.
I really enjoyed the beautiful writing, folklore & fantasy in this one & the character of Jean, a midwife & Muiriun, the young pregnant wife she helps & falls for. Lyrical & enchanting.
Happy Saturday! Back from my retreat & back to wifi & cell service but still having majorisdues with the Litsy iPhone app since it went out on me in the middle of leaving #5JoyFriday posts last Saturday. The only thing I can do is see my Litfluence but nothing else can be accessed or looked up. 😩 Litsy tech can‘t “replicate the issue” so no help at all. I guess with 8+ years with no issues except when the site is down for all, I‘ve been lucky⬇️
Ahh, friends… it‘s 5 AM at the airport & I‘m heading to Maui for our company retreat. Internet & cell service are known to be spotty so I may be on & off for the next 3 days. Should be an adventure! 😬🤞🏼
Starting this one for the trip.
pick⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Unexpectedly loved this! I borrowed it from my library through Libby because I liked the cover and title without really knowing what it was about. Glad I did!
Set in 1813, this novel is about a midwife who lives in solitude outside of the village and one of her patients, a neighbour, who seems to be going through a rough time at home with her husband.
Folktales, #lgbt, and feminist themes.
On the train back from Providence!
pickI liked this a lot. It's a queer selkie wife retelling.
#Aardvark @AardvarkBookClub
#DoubeSpin @TheAromaofBooks
pickI really enjoyed this book. It's a retelling of the Selkie Wife folktale. In this one, Jean, the local midwife, finds her neighbor's wife outside one night in labor. She helps her to her house and then delivers the baby, but when her neighbor shows up for his wife and child, more questions do too.
Good thing the library has a never ending supply of these fancy paper things with the words inside.
Actually this one is mine. And it's signed by the author. Extra fancy. #Aardvark
A SWEET STING OF SALT finally engaged me a little past the 100-page mark! Hurray!
It‘s really gloomy out today and I think I‘ve caught a mild cold, so I plan to spend a goodly chunk of the afternoon reading my book while I drink hot beverages.
I want to cook my supper and read my book. He wants me to give him seventy-three treats. Sigh.
I say I want to read my book, but honestly… well. I don‘t dislike A SWEET STING OF SALT as of page 90. I can‘t point to any element and say, “I hate this,” but I can‘t point out anything I love (or really like), either. One of those. I‘ll give it a little bit longer, then consider whether I want to drift away from it. #gaymay
This week‘s library haul consists of the final volume of FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST and some exciting stuff for Gay May. I‘m amazed the librarians processed A SWEET STING OF SALT so quickly. They normally drag their feet on anything genre, but I guess they‘ve decided this one‘s literary enough to merit better treatment.
Then again, THE BAKER AND THE BARD has been out less than two months, too. Maybe they‘ve checked their genre processing bias. #gaymay
Yay voting day for #CampLitsy24
My choices:
- A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland
- How to Knit a Human by Anna Jacobson
- Clear by Carys Davies
- I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
- Knife by Salman Rushdie
- Extinction by Daniel Preston
It was so hard to choose!
Getting excited for camp now and to see what the final books are! Thanks so much to the organizers @Megabooks @squirrelbrain @BarbaraBB
If you relate to any of these you should probably grab a copy 😉🦭🌊💘
#aardvarkbookclub #jointoday #codelitsy
Once a young woman uncovers a dark secret about her neighbor and his mysterious new wife, she‘ll have to fight to keep herself—and the woman she loves—safe in this stunning queer reimagining of the classic folktale “The Selkie Wife.”
#aardvarkbookclub #jointoday
It was so freaking hard to pick 1 book this month. I ended up with the most unusual choice. Which is pretty on brand for me, actually.
#Aardvark @AardvarkBookClub
Does anyone else vote with their dollars when ordering from book clubs? I‘ve already read and loved James. (I am SO deeply behind on reviews!!) I bought it a) to support Everett, whom I love as an author, and b) because I want #aardvark to be incentivized to choose more books like it. Salt sounded interesting, and my library didn‘t have it, so it went in as well! I love the selkie myth.
Starting a new arc on my crack of dawn flight this morning
Selkies and spinsters and sapphics, oh my!
pickThis beautiful book is a sapphic retelling of The Selkie Wife, an Irish/Scottish folk-tale in which a man compels a Selkie to marry him, causing her to long for the sea and her true home. Although I knew generally what the story was about, the plot kept me guessing. There are some dark elements here. I found the beginning a bit slow, but by 20% in, I was hooked. ( Thanks to NetGalley for the #ARC, full rvw on Goodreads.com/xtinalea )
🦭 Myth Retelling
🇨🇦 Canadian Literature
🌈 Queer Characters 2d