The Poisons We Drink
Ratings6
Average rating3.6
In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.
Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.
Then an enemy's iron bullet kills her mother, Venus's life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother's killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.'s most influential politicians.
As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it's hard to tell who to trust...Herself included.
The Poisons We Drink is a potent YA debut about a world where love potions are weaponized against hate and prejudice, sisterhood is unbreakable, and self-love is life and death.
Tags
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
Netgalley read
I really wanted to like this book, cover is gorgeous and enough for me to stop and pick it up.
However, I'm probably not the right audience for this book. Some teenage angst and too many secrets, and I'm not going to pretend to fully understand what's happening.
It's a very intricate world and magic and I went with, “So it's kind of like X Men but magic instead of mutants and that thing in the MC is kind of like Venom, got it.” But I didn't really get it and most magic was just stuff happening and I hoped things would become clear... it didn't.
Feels like a book that some will love and some like me just scratching their head and wondering what's going on.
Probably 2.5 but rounding it up.
Contains spoilers
💬:N/A
📖Genres: fiction, fantasy, young adult, LGBT, queer
📚Page Count: 474
🎧Audiobook Length: N/A
👩🏾🏫My Rating: DNF
TW - <spoiler>Abandonment, Gun violence, Death, Cursing, Murder, Violence, Death of parent, Blood, and Grief</spoiler>
Thank you so much to NETGALLEY and the PUBLISHER for my arc (advanced reader's copy) of this book.
This story is about Venus, a Witcher (a person who controls a type of magic) and her family of Witchers. Venus is a powerful brewer and her and her mother sell illegal potions to people for money. At around 25% of the way through the book someone <spoiler>kills Venus' mother.</spoiler> Eventually Venus is offered a chance at revenge, will she take it?
The pacing in this book felt slow and I had a hard time caring about the characters. The side characters all seemed one dimensional but I'm putting this novel on hold until the audiobook releases, so I can't be for sure. The world building felt very heavy but not in a good way.
The world building was interesting but the way it was delivered felt really clunky. At the beginning of each chapter there was exposition in the form of a newspaper article, an email, or some other source. On top of that at the beginning of every chapter, there was exposition littered throughout the conversations and through the narrator's comments. The information overload became too much.
What I read of this book was just okay, I'm going to DNF for now and then finish it once the audiobook is released.
DNF until later date.
Thi was a good book. It had moments where it was dragging or where things were taking too long but it was enjoyable. I liked that potions were the main magic system and not just normal elemental powers
