Book Review: Our Cut of Salt

Author: Deena Helm 

Title: Our Cut of Salt 

Genre: Horror 

Number of Pages: 288 

Plot Summary: Nuhad has not returned to her childhood home in Haifa since she was displaced during the Nakba in 1948, but neither she nor the house has forgotten the other. There has always been something strange about the home. Cats refuse to approach it, unexplained noises come from inside, and some of those who enter have disappeared entirely.

After Nuhad's death, her granddaughter Marina travels to Haifa, determined to visit the ancestral home and learn more about the Palestinian culture and family history she has spent much of her life disconnected from. Her mother, Haifa, reluctantly agrees to the trip despite fears of her own. But as Marina grows closer to the house and begins experiencing disturbing dreams, strange encounters, and the terrifying sensation that she is drowning on dry land, it becomes clear that something buried in the family's past has never truly been laid to rest.

Across three generations, Nuhad, Haifa, and Marina must confront the history that has haunted their family, including long-held secrets and painful truths that have been passed down alongside their trauma. 

My Verdict: 

Thank you to Libro.fm for the advanced listening copy!

Our Cut of Salt was a stunning debut. This is a genuinely haunting story about three generations of Palestinian women and the ways trauma, grief, displacement, and memory can transcend generations.

I especially loved the personification of the haunted house. It feels perfect for a story rooted in the genocide and displacement of Palestinians. The house isn't simply where the haunting happens. It remembers. It grieves. It holds onto the family that was forced away from it. Even after Nuhad is displaced during the Nakba and spends decades away from Haifa, the house remembers her, just as she has always carried the house with her.

That made the supernatural horror so much more powerful for me. The haunting of the house and the historical trauma of the family are impossible to separate. Nuhad, Haifa, and Marina each have a different relationship with Palestine and their family's history, but all three are shaped by what happened before them. Family secrets, confessions, and things that have gone unspoken for generations slowly come to the surface, showing just how much can be passed down even when no one talks about it.

There were moments in this audiobook when I genuinely had to pause it and take a breath before I could keep listening. Some of the revelations and experiences these women recount are incredibly difficult to hear, particularly knowing that the horror of this story isn't confined to the supernatural. It was heartbreaking, and listening to these stories and confessions aloud made them feel especially intimate and immediate.

This is the kind of horror where the supernatural elements are frightening, but the very real history underneath them is what stays with you. Helm uses the haunted house so effectively to explore family, identity, displacement, memory, secrets, and generational trauma. Our Cut of Salt is eerie, devastating, and beautifully written, and an incredible debut that I won't forget anytime soon.

Subject Headings: Palestinian families; Palestinian women; Intergenerational trauma; Haunted houses; Family secrets; Nakba; Forced displacement; Cultural identity; Mothers and daughters; Grandmothers; Ancestral homes; Grief; Memory; Confessions; Supernatural horror; Historical trauma

Similar Authors:

Stephen Graham Jones — For horror that uses the supernatural to explore cultural identity, history, trauma, and the ways the past continues to shape the present.

Shirley Jackson — Especially for readers drawn to haunted houses that feel like characters themselves and horror where the boundaries between psychological, familial, and supernatural forces become increasingly difficult to separate.

G. Willow Wilson — For speculative fiction that draws on Middle Eastern history, culture, folklore, and identity while exploring displacement and belonging.

Carmen Maria Machado — For literary horror that uses unsettling and sometimes surreal elements to explore trauma, memory, identity, and the stories people carry with them.