'Neath the pumpkin patch

Hello!

Sticking with the folk horror today, with a review for Bound by the Salt by John Togher, the first in The Cairnshore Tides trilogy. I really enjoyed this one, to the point where the moment I finished I preordered the next two immediately (The Tidewarden, 30/11/26 and What the Tide Kept, 19/03/27).

When Georgette vanishes without explanation, the only clue she leaves behind is an envelope postmarked from a remote coastal village he has never heard her Cairnshore.

A place of shuttered windows. Silent streets. A sea that moves without sound.

Drawn by equal parts devotion and dread, he travels north to bring her home. But Cairnshore is a place that does not welcome strangers.

Part folk horror, part psychological descent, Bound by the Salt is an unsettling meditation on love, memory, and the terrible weight of belonging. A story where devotion becomes compulsion, the coastline becomes a threshold, and some bonds run deeper than blood.

Because in Cairnshore, by salt, they are bound.

‘Through the mist, something immense rises from the surf. White and smooth and towering. Like bone exposed by a wound in the sea.’

Have you ever stood on the beach as the haar rolls in? That’s exactly how this novella feels, that creeping, atmospheric gloom that could (and in this case does) hide so much more.

There is something about folk horror that is firmly embedded into both the local environment, but also its culture, traditions and relationships that just hits that bit harder for me. We know there is a world beyond Cairnshore, we catch glimpses of it, but Togher has thoroughly grounded this story in the local, and it’s there in the interactions with the locals, the mood of the town and in the little glimpses of local history that we get. There is a depth to this horror, what that stretches its tendrils through every aspect of life here, and out beyond the reaches of this narrow locale for those that dare slip away.

If the first part of Bound by the Salt was the creeping of haar, that deep unsettling wrongness, and the slow uncovering of things that should be left to slumber; the latter half was a delicate twisting balance of devastation, salvation, loss and reunion and from around the 50% mark I couldn’t put this one down. The horror becomes more present, more real, with a dash of body horror of the nautical persuasion thrown in for good measure, and Togher’s imagery during this part is absolutely stellar and had the hairs on my arm on end at some points. In the midst of this, we began to unwind both the truth and the past, and there were twists and turns, and you got to see just how deep and far the stories ran and how steep the price of tradition could be.

The one thing I did struggle a little bit was getting a grasp on our POV character. We spend the entire story seeing things through his eyes, and yet I never truly felt like I knew much about him as a person. On the one hand it works really well establishing him as the outsider, as though we are already part of the local community and we’re getting to experience it through the eyes of a stranger, and it certainly adds to the unsettling feeling as events unfold. But it was hard to be actively concerned for him as a character; although it did feel like we got to see a little more of what kind of person he was towards the end of the book which was nice.

What I did end up invested in was the relationship between him and Georgette, although to some extent it is one-sided as we are very firmly in his POV and his memories and emotions towards her. Yet it felt so much easier to grasp hold of their relationship, than of either of them as individuals; and that was very much where my investment was grounded especially in the latter part of the book, where the currents were very much pulling them apart. There was also a twist with their relationship that I did not see coming, and originally, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it, especially with some other revelations and developments; however, overall it worked very well, and I appreciate how it was built into the folklore itself and thus out into the community and traditions, and I do feel it was well handled.

The ending was not what I had expected but worked really well. It felt a little like the sun poking through the clouds after a devastating storm, that little dash of hope that the worst was over, but the possibility that there was more to come. Togher also shows us how life changes when out of the shadow of that haar, but also how folklore shifts and reshapes itself, again leaving that tantalising whisper of new tales.

Bound by the Salt was an unsettling, compelling folk horror novella that had me completely and utterly wrapped up in its atmosphere; and the dash of nautical, body horror was absolutely delicious. What reservations I did have, absolutely did not detract from my enjoyment of this book, and while it will not be for anyone, I did very much enjoy it, and I am looking forward to the rest of the series.