This Poison Heart

Mostly audiobook review- Clearly I’m in the minority of negative opinions about this book, but I do think that folks looking for own-voices Black-American YA fantasy fiction, positive adoption rep or queer family rep might want to check this out.

City kid Briseis is a teenager who can help plants grow. Her moms (plant shop owners) know, but she has strained relationships with her friends who don’t understand her and want her to distance herself from the world of plants. While she’s thinking about applying for college, she learns she’s inherited a mysterious mansion and ultimately finds it has secrets.

Oooookay, my issues. I found the plot to be slow and it takes so long to build on the gothic atmosphere, mysteries, and stakes. There’s a fair bit of repetitive and one-dimensional writing, dialogue, and characters — and it doesn’t translate well on audio IMO. I mean there’s just so many times you can listen to “I said,” over and over again (my point was 81% when I switched to e-book). If the writing was better OR the book’s plot and characters tightened up this could have been at least 3-stars from me - I think it just needed more editing. There’s more griping I could add, but I’ll just say I face-palmed myself SO many times and the romance was only based on “she’s so pretty,” (spoiler below)

even when Briseis learns about the age gap — vomit.