Erin A. Craig’s follow-up to House of Salt and Sorrows certainly recaptures the spooky and foreboding vibes of its predecessor, bringing us back to Highmoor where youngest Thaumas sister, Verity, is now eighteen and the only sister still at home aside from Camille, who now runs the estate. It seems all the sisters have moved on from the curse of the first book (and that possibly only Camille and Annaleigh know what truly happened), except for Verity, who never stopped seeing ghosts, though she didn’t realize it. When Camille shatters her illusions of normality in an effort to keep her home and protected, Verity runs away, answering an invitation from the Duchess of Bloem to paint a portrait of her son. Everything in Bloem seems charmed at first, and Verity evens develops a budding romance with Alexander, the subject of her painting, but the longer Verity stays, the more secrets she runs into, and the more she has to question if what she is seeing is reality, madness, or something darker.

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed we didn’t get to see more of the Thaumas sisters in this sequel. We do get information about what each of them has been up to since the events of the first book, but outside of a couple of letters, we only get to see Verity interact with Camille. I also found myself a little less patient with Verity as a protagonist than I was with Annaleigh in the first book. I understand Verity has been very sheltered her whole life, so I could excuse some of that naïveté, but I wasn’t a fan of how in denial she was about the strange things she was seeing. Either believe you’re crazy and go get your sisters’ help, or believe what you’re seeing and figure out what’s going on, but don’t spend so many pages pretending nothing weird is happening.

This book goes to some weirder and darker places than the first book, with varying success. The atmosphere is excellently gothic and creepy, but the plot is very slow-burn and somewhat convoluted. In House of Salt and Sorrows, Annaleigh is at least somewhat driven by the mystery of who killed Eulalie, but for much of House of Roots and Ruin, Verity isn’t driven by anything of her own so much as treading water while we wait and see if she’ll realize something or someone is manipulating her.

All in all, I’m giving House of Roots and Ruin 2.5 stars out of 5. It’s an interesting story, but I don’t think it lives up to the first book. I will still be keeping my eyes out for book three, though, as I believe there is certainly potential for things to ramp up after the way this book ended.