Book #360 of 2021:
This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron (This Poison Heart #1)
This YA fantasy novel is a breath of fresh air, especially after I wasn’t entirely sold on author Kalynn Bayron’s previous offering Cinderella Is Dead. The plot is a little slow, but in that hopepunk, Maggie Stiefvater way that focuses on the characters and their emotional experiences over major developments per se. There’s not even an explicit villain on the scene until fairly late in the text, just our teen heroine looking for answers regarding the rural estate she’s inherited out of the blue from an unknown relative of her birth mother. I like this character a lot — a black, bisexual New Yorker with two adoptive moms and a magical talent for growing plants — and it’s a pleasure simply to watch her interacting with the world around her as she learns about the curious family she was born into (and their surprising connection to Greek mythology). I also enjoy the energy that comes from the protagonist starting the story already aware of her powers, skipping past the breathless discovery phase that’s often standard in this genre.
As a side note, this is the first book I’ve read that includes a jurisdiction defunding the police in favor of social worker emergency responders, so that was a neat detail to encounter as well. I could stand to see more of that, in fiction and reality alike.
[Content warning for death of a parent and massive age-gap romance.]
★★★★☆
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