Standalone
Reviewed by CJ | Rating: 3/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 📱
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read The Poison Daughter yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
OPENING HOOK
A cursed poisonous kiss, a husband who won’t stay dead, and a heroine with a vigilante side hustle murdering abusive men under the cover of darkness. This book is a lot (over 600 pages of it), and I still finished in under three days.
THE FULL STORY — SPOILERS INCLUDED
Harlow’s curse is simple but brutal: one kiss and whoever she’s kissed drops dead. Her parents figured out a use for that a long time ago, deciding to marry her off, let her kill the husband, and repeat. On the side, she’s built a whole underground system with a pub owner taking the names of abusive men from women in need so she can seduce them and take them out quietly. A Poison Vixen, you could call her 😉
The night before she’s set to marry her latest political match, Henry, she goes out on one more job. She gets the guy upstairs, kisses him, and… he doesn’t die. He’s getting right into it, actually, which throws her off so much she makes a run for it. Then the next day she meets her husband-to-be and as luck would have it, it’s her target from last night. He’s not even from her settlement, so how was he the target she was given, right down to what he’d be wearing?
Their engagement supper gets attacked before anyone can figure that out. There are explosions and chaos ensues chaos, with Henry using healing magic on her brother, which softens her toward him a little whether she wants it to or not. His people decide it’s not safe to stay, so they all head back to Mountain Haven immediately, cutting her time at home short. The trip to the fort is perilous and requires cutting through the woods where this blood mist has been turning people into the drained, some kind of vampiric zombie thing that’s getting worse and more frequent, and nobody knows where it’s coming from.
Once they’re at Mountain Haven, Harlow finds out why Henry didn’t die from her kiss: his mother can resurrect him, and once he’s died and been brought back, he can’t be killed that way again. He’s been through basically every method of death (stabbing, poison, all of it), so now her entire murder-Henry-to-escape plan is dead in the water until she can get a bit more creative about it. Henry, of course, actually invites her to keep trying.
While we’re in Mountain Haven, there’s a bit of a primal chase and bang event in the woods and a full-on marriage ritual performed in front of the clan. Let’s just say it’s… a lot. Orgies and public sex ceremonies, we can safely say it’s wild culture shock for Harlow. Adding to the confusion and stress, the drained keep getting bolder with their attacks, which pushes them to return to Lunameade. I was happy to be returning there because this section of the book dragged for me. There was a lot of information about the well deep within the fort that can help defend against the drained, and the history of Henry’s family and the fort itself, but it felt like it moved very slowly compared to the beginning and ending in my opinion.
Anyway, we’re back in Harlow’s settlement and that’s where everything breaks wide open plot-wise. Harlow finds out her sister Aidia (the reason she became the Poison Vixen, after Aidia’s husband Rafe abused her) has actually been dead for six months. She’d been talking to her, worrying about her, all while Rafe had been free without being held accountable for her murder. As her memories come back, it also comes out that her parents knew, so she gets her revenge and it’s as ugly as it is satisfying and heartbreaking all at once. Rafe gets captured and tortured until he feels exactly what Aidia felt, and I’m a little alarmed by how happy that made me. If nothing else, my reading habits have really made me consider where to focus in self reflection.
On top of all that, it is revealed that Henry has a second magic: emotional manipulation. And her brother Kellan turns out to be the rebel leader they’d all been hunting for, working against their parents. When Harlow kills their parents, she doesn’t harm Kellan, and the whole mess brings them closer together. He stays behind to start rebuilding the settlement into something better.
Henry and Harlow patch things up, Harlow forgives him. And then… it just ends. I have so many questions about the world and Mountain Haven. What’s going on with the drained? is someone controlling the blood mist? What is the world like outside of this mountin? Is there a battle about to be waged on the drained, or are they showing more intelligence and adaptation? It wrapped up so quickly and left so many things open that my little brain is spinning.
BEST PART OF THIS BOOK
Henry’s whole deathless mechanic. The idea that once he dies a specific way and comes back, that method is off the table forever, and he’s been killed hundreds of times testing the limits of it? that’s such a good piece of the world-building and character puzzle.
WORST PART OF THIS BOOK
The pacing in the back half. Everything at Mountain Haven stretches out, and then the second they’re back at Lunameade it’s bam, bam, bam — parents dead, Rafe tortured, Kellan revealed, romance resolved, book over. And the blood mist and the drained, which get so much buildup, just… never get a real wrap up. I have a lot of questions that I don’t think I missed the answers to, I think they just weren’t there. Maybe I’m the only one who felt like big chunks were missing though? Who knows, mood has a lot to do with how I feel about a book, so maybe there were things I missed and am taking this much harder than I should be.
THE STEAM RATING BREAKDOWN
🔥🔥🔥🔥 Very explicit and public sex scenes; they’re absolutely open door. Some unique and explicit moments here, especially tied into the marriage ritual at Mountain Haven and the primal forest sex traditions. The romance is pretty central to the plot, not just a side element.
THE TWIST WE DIDN’T SEE COMING
Finding out Aidia had been dead for six months, and that Harlow had been mind-controlled by Rafe into killing her. We’d been in her head worrying about her sister right alongside her, and finding out none of that was real hurt.
A MOMENT THAT STOOD OUT
Learning exactly how Henry’s resurrection magic works, and just how many times and how many ways he’s already died. Such a cool concept.
THE CHARACTER WE LOVED TO HATE
Oh boy, Rafe is the obvious answer here. He’s manipulative, betraying, murderous and awful. But at various points throughout the book pretty much every single one of the characters feels completely unredeemable for one reason or another, right before we see things from a new perspective that changes your mind. That’s a testament to how well they’re written, you’re invested even when you’re not sure who you’re actually supposed to be rooting for.
THE ENDING — SATISFIED OR DISAPPOINTED?
Mixed. The emotional stuff between Harlow and Henry wraps up in a way that works. But the bigger plot with the mist, the drained, what’s actually going on outside these two settlements? It just stops without resolution. After how much time we spent building that up, I felt a bit adrift when I closed the book.
WOULD WE REREAD IT?
Maybe someday, but I’m more interested in checking out other books from this author than revisiting this one right away.
WHO IS THIS FOR
Readers who want something a little different in their fantasy, and who don’t need every side plot wrapped up neatly by the end. I still have questions, and I’m almost at peace with that. Mostly. Probably.
WHERE TO GET THIS BOOK
📖 Physical Book
Amazon | Bookshop.org
🎧 Audiobook
Audible | Libro.fm
📱 Ebook
Amazon Kindle
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📱 | Genre: Fantasy Romance | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥