This Poison Heart Review

 

As I walked through the city I ran into this café doubled as a bookstore. Inside I checked the menu, but first scoured the contents of their book section. I'm not sure what inspired this that day, but I had a compulsion to support black authors in that moment. I saw Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi on a shelf, I book I thought I bought a year ago and on top of the shelf in a display, This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron. It's been a while since I saw a book cover this attractive. I picked up Children of Blood and Bone and then I examined This Poison Heart. The colors were vibrant and had a painterly feel to them. The cover felt three dimensional as the young brown woman on the cover took the forefront with the trees blurred giving the image a sense of distance and depth. This was all accompanied by gold raised lettering of the book's title. The back cover was almost as unique. It had the same painterly feel as the front with the blurred out foliage in the distance with a shrub on the bottom right corner taking the forefront. Instead of the blurb the back was adorned with review quotes encased in a red plaque and gold frame with a family crest of a three headed woman taking the top. The same gold lettering adorned the spine.

I opened the book and on the inside jacket was the blurb:

Briseis has a gift: with a single touch she can grow plants from tiny seeds to rich blooms.

I stopped right there. This book was about a girl with the ability to control plants and at this time I'm writing a story about a woman who can do the same thing. I felt this was right. I had to buy this book. The next day on my commute to Leblanc I opened the book aboard the train and began the first chapter. My initial reaction was not good. I felt the writing to be rather basic and mediocre. The language felt too plain and not descriptive enough. I also felt exhausted with the teenage protagonist. The YA genre seems overly abundant and I just grew tired of seeing so many adolescent protagonists in fiction. This was further enforced by the use of current pop culture references. I was actually thinking about dropping the book and that I got my hopes too high. The last book I think I picked up based on the cover was Six of Crows and I didn't like it, but something told me to keep reading Poison Heart and given this was a nearly four hundred page book capping at 370 pages I should give it a bit more time and I'm glad I did.

By Chapter 3 I was hooked. What This Poison Heart lacks in complex writing in makes up for in character and intrigue. Briseis has two mothers aptly named Mom and Mo and I like how the story doesn't make a big deal of it. Both Mo and Mom are no-nonsense-having black mothers, but Mom is the more no-nonsense-having of the two. She isn't wholly strict either. She jokes with Bri and her friends and is also superstitious. Mo is also jokey as well and is a decent cook, but can't cook breakfast for the life of her. She's also a bit more lenient in giving Bri her space. The two of them together make for a fun pair. Briseis as the central character is fine. I like her, but it's hard to describe her personality with adjectives. She feels like a blank slate teen protagonist, but also exhibits unique traits like how she views her relationship with her friends and her affinity for horror movies.

Briseis fanart by Illustrationpages

Like a lot of coming of age stories Bri is starting to learn who she is and what all she can do with her powers, but just calling this a coming of age story is doing the book a disservice. This is an urban fantasy novel that explores the mysteries of this small town in upstate New York. Like I mentioned in the blurb Bri has the ability to grow and manipulate plants. These powers are presented as a natural extension of hers that she's learning to fully explore and embrace. It's also more grounded than say Poison Ivy. She doesn't conjure things from nothing and no fantastical monstrous man eating plants. I don't want to give anything away, but there's more that comes to her abilities that is integral to the main conflict. 

The main conflict itself is a bit of a slow burn. The story presents itself like a slice of life story in the beginning to use anime terms but becomes a story of intrigue and mystery once the main conflict presents itself. I felt for Bri and her mothers when they navigated the new town. I wanted everything to go right for them and to find happiness. There's a twist implemented that was done well and will give you hindsight on earlier events on a re-read. This Poison Heart also taught me quite a few things. It caused me to stop and look up various species of plants, a little bit of botany, Greek mythology, and even a bakery in upstate New York that Paul Rudd co-owns. I was actually surprised about how many real world facts the author pulled from. Bayron definitely did her research. By the the last few chapters I was on the edge of my seat eager to know what would happen next and after the last page I was left wanting more.

I highly recommend This Poison Heart to any fans of the fantasy genre and those who like a little mystery and whims in their life. This title will also be getting a sequel This Wicked Fate which will release next month on June 21st and you can pre-order it now.