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erikajay's review
4.0
I’m surprised this book isn’t more popular! It’s a simple read, but an enjoyable one. I loved the Indian influence! The author has a couple pages at the end that says where some of her research and influences came from, which I really enjoyed. I love tales and myths from different parts of the world.
The storyline was really interesting, assassin created to have a deadly kiss? Yes please! The characters were good, the storyline moved along at a good pace, and I enjoyed the world building.
Looking forward to book two!
The storyline was really interesting, assassin created to have a deadly kiss? Yes please! The characters were good, the storyline moved along at a good pace, and I enjoyed the world building.
Looking forward to book two!
christiana's review
3.0
I appreciate what this book was trying to do, but the plot moved really slowly and the protagonist was a little too unsuspecting for me to also believe her a great assassin.
ameserole's review against another edition
4.0
Just by looking at the cover of this book I was so intrigued. Poison's kiss is about a girl, named Marinda, who has killed and continues to kill men with a kiss. Marinda deals with love, duty, family, and even war (within herself or with the people she works with). Honestly, this book was so good and I cannot wait to read poison's cage next year!! :)
booklover160's review against another edition
DNF at page 86.
There’s too many “I’m a hardened assassin who’s been doing this for years… but now all of a sudden I’m making all these stupid mistakes that I’ve NEVER made before because I’m usually perfect” instances happening. Marinda is bothering me.
Adding to donate pile.
There’s too many “I’m a hardened assassin who’s been doing this for years… but now all of a sudden I’m making all these stupid mistakes that I’ve NEVER made before because I’m usually perfect” instances happening. Marinda is bothering me.
Adding to donate pile.
ginalyn's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The premise of this book is one that I have heard before but the execution was so much better than I have ever read. It is well done and so good! I love the main characters and couldn’t stop reading even when I didn’t totally agree with the characters. I felt everything so strongly despite feeling like I was reading the book easily. It was entertaining while also being interesting and thoughtful. I loved it. I think it is under rated and under thought of by everyone!
libbydunc4's review against another edition
3.0
3.5
A fast and enjoyable read, however not an amazingly exceptional one. I really enjoyed the world and concept of this book, however the plot lacked a bit and was slightly predictable at some points.
I enjoyed 'Poison's Kiss', and would describe it as a poor man's 'Wrath and the dawn' and a better version of 'Poison Study' by Maria V. Snyder.
A fast and enjoyable read, however not an amazingly exceptional one. I really enjoyed the world and concept of this book, however the plot lacked a bit and was slightly predictable at some points.
I enjoyed 'Poison's Kiss', and would describe it as a poor man's 'Wrath and the dawn' and a better version of 'Poison Study' by Maria V. Snyder.
whalien_reads's review against another edition
3.0
Things didn't really pick up until the last 50 pages or so but it was still a great read!
annmeyer's review against another edition
2.0
Well, that was a bumpy ride.
There are a couple things about Poison's Kiss that work well, I'm willing to acknowledge that.
The premise of the story is intriguing and the prose is above average in style. It's rare for YA (and is fortunately becoming less so) to tell stories that do not exemplify typical Western norms, beliefs, peoples, etc. There are not many YA novels, that I have encountered at least, that step out of this homogeny and do so by drawing on Indian folklore. Yet, as several other reviewers have pointed out, there are a fair amount of errors or slights that Shields seems to make in regards to language and culture that leave me skeptical.
While there is something specific about white authors depicting non-white cultures that is irking, it seems like a generally good rule that any author writing about a culture and country that they are unfamiliar with or do not identify with ought to do a lot of research and outside consultation with those who are familiar and/or identify with said culture/country. This last bit seems particularly important and particularly lacking in the author's acknowledgements.
Writing isn't just about figuring out how to tell a good story, but to make sure you're telling that story accurately.
All that said, there are a lot of things about Poison's Kiss that don't work well and that actively made it difficult for me to finish the book, in spite of the fact that it was under 300 pages (thankfully).
To start with the most glaring issue: world-building, or a lack thereof. In the author's note, Shields emphasizes that her goal in the novel was "to create a unique world, with its own history and culture." Yet, ironically, she seems to offer more details about said world in the author's note than in the writing itself. She may do an apt job at depicting aspects of Indian mythology, but the actual fictional world in which Marinda resides receives extremely little attention. What time period are we in? Where exactly are we? What are the social norms and expectations? What are gender dynamics like (especially important considering Marinda seems to violate any that I would expect to exist)? Class dynamics? Nothing seems grounded, it's all just suspended tropes that are reasonably well-written but don't offer enough reason to become invested.
Even as the novel places its emphasis on religion and government, we're given virtually no information about the political reality until the end of the book nor do we receive context on why any of this matters in the first place, besides in the context of Marinda's character which still after everything felt lacking.
Like with any writing, there needs to be something to make us care. Good writing moves beyond the needs and desires of the protagonist and finds context within the larger world itself, hopefully not in the last fifty pages. In rare situations, usually with exceptionally good books, that protagonist may be enough to create that kind of value, but the character has to be well-constructed and there have to be tangible moments/images/items to hold onto or some kind of intense intrigue to hold you until more development.
Marinda didn't do it for me: it felt like every plot twist and reveal just undermined her intelligence and agency, making her look more foolish and naive for the sake of adding much needed complexity and movement to the plot.
Her salvation might have been in her relationships, as she so ardently sought to define herself in the context of others, yet even they lacked strength and substance; her friendship with Iyla was toxic and unhealthy, her connection to Gita seemed to have so much more potential at creating complexity but didn't receive enough attention, and her romance with Deven was horrifically rushed and thus felt unrealistic (a point I'll discuss in a bit). Her relationship with Mani seemed designed to be the saving grace, but it still felt like too much was staked on one connection that, again, was repeatedly undermined.
Maybe when it comes down to it, it was a problem with the narrative point of view itself or the act of constantly emphasizing telling vs showing. There seem to be a lot of things off with the portrayal of what was supposed to be a heroine whose agency and livelihood was twisted to benefit others at great personal cost. This should be a hit, but it felt completely off for me.
The other main killer of my interest and respect for this book was the romance.
A commonplace in most YA novels now, there's almost always some kind of love interest or tension or triangle or whatever. As a feeling human being who herself enjoys romance and love, I'm usually all here for it. But more and more I'm finding that love interests and romantic relationships seem to be integrated perhaps only to check something off a list, and don't receive the necessary attention and development to make sure they're good. Instead they become cheesy and usually feature bad flirting (the dialogue in general in Poison's Kiss often felt stilted and unnatural, but especially in the context of romance) and again, undermine the characters and the actual plot itself.
This is a good example of the latter kind.
The book's description itself iterates that the turning point lies in Marinda receiving "orders to kiss Deven, a boy she knows too well to be convinced he needs to die." Let's take a second to let this sink in. This seems to establish that Marinda knows Deven well. While most of us might not need to know people that well to be convinced they don't need to die, we don't usually go about structuring such a fact like this.
Placing emphasis on how well Marinda knows Deven seems like a mistake considering she knows him for all of, what, two or three days, and also knows virtually zero actual information about him. But don't worry, she's willing to stake her life, her brother's life, and her friend's life all on her love for man she met two or three days ago.
Talk about unrealistic and rushed. There is almost ZERO development into who Deven is by the time they become potential love interests, and we (or Marinda) don't really find out anything about him until the second half of the book. I'm pretty sure you can't just tell your readers to be invested in a relationship for them to be, you actually have to give them a reason, preferably several, to care.
The whole plot becomes guided by Marinda's affection for Deven. Her rebellion against Gopal and her forced work as an assassin is not mobilized because of her morals and her own agency, but because she feels attraction to someone she met days ago. She's literally willing to suddenly risk it all because of him, not because of herself or her brother who is deemed the most important person in her life.
This is all also ignoring the fact in that Marinda's inability to kiss someone without killing them ought to then logically become an extreme point of tension in her potential relationship with Deven, but is instead almost immediately dissolved. When working with such a powerful and emotional aspect of this folklore, the idea that someone's kiss is not even their own, that it's been completely usurped to do evil and they're cut off from traditional expressions of affection, should be something that is massively emphasized if you're focusing on romance. But instead, again it's undermined. Even when placed in the context of her relationship with her brother, it's emphasized as significant, this potentially unraveling force in Marinda's life, but it still doesn't carry the weight that it could.
All of this makes no sense to me. Once it became clear that that's where the romance in this book was leading, and that I was supposed to be cheering for some affection that should have been meaningless if grounded in reality, it became extremely difficult to continue reading.
If Marinda is supposed to be a strong-minded heroine interested in defeating evil and securing freedom for her and her family, why does accomplishing it depend solely on her connection to Deven? It's literally his family, his intervention, his support that enables Marinda to accomplish her goals. If that's intended and is supposed to illustrate some thematic aspect about her lack of independence, it doesn't come across.
Instead, the whole thing seems somewhat thoughtless and lacking substance. This is supposed to be a story which pays "homage to the origins of the visha kanya myth," but instead grounds it so intensely in a relationship which receives almost zero development and is just forced together.
If you're going to write about love, if you're going to have your protagonist fall in love with someone, you need to write it in a way to where your readers fall in love too. It has to be real and it has to feel natural, not forced.
If you cannot do that, or do not want to, then just cut it out. Give me more of Marinda's story and her fears and her memories and her desires. Give me more of her instead.
In conclusion, this feels like it needed to be re-drafted again before being published. I'm not sure how much time was spent writing and editing and revising, but it needed a lot more love and attention. Writing is absolutely extremely fucking difficult, yes, but good writing requires that kind of time and scrutiny. Does every single scene bring something important to the table? Are there moments which feel unnatural, where you should be showing vs telling or telling vs showing?
This book doesn't feel like it got enough of those questions or was under enough scrutiny. It's probably better than a lot of YA novels that have been published, but that speaks more to the frequent flops within the genre rather than to the strength of this. I think this truly could have been a masterpiece, this folklore offers such a beautiful premise and space to deliver such a powerful story. But the writing just doesn't do it.
There are a couple things about Poison's Kiss that work well, I'm willing to acknowledge that.
The premise of the story is intriguing and the prose is above average in style. It's rare for YA (and is fortunately becoming less so) to tell stories that do not exemplify typical Western norms, beliefs, peoples, etc. There are not many YA novels, that I have encountered at least, that step out of this homogeny and do so by drawing on Indian folklore. Yet, as several other reviewers have pointed out, there are a fair amount of errors or slights that Shields seems to make in regards to language and culture that leave me skeptical.
While there is something specific about white authors depicting non-white cultures that is irking, it seems like a generally good rule that any author writing about a culture and country that they are unfamiliar with or do not identify with ought to do a lot of research and outside consultation with those who are familiar and/or identify with said culture/country. This last bit seems particularly important and particularly lacking in the author's acknowledgements.
Writing isn't just about figuring out how to tell a good story, but to make sure you're telling that story accurately.
All that said, there are a lot of things about Poison's Kiss that don't work well and that actively made it difficult for me to finish the book, in spite of the fact that it was under 300 pages (thankfully).
To start with the most glaring issue: world-building, or a lack thereof. In the author's note, Shields emphasizes that her goal in the novel was "to create a unique world, with its own history and culture." Yet, ironically, she seems to offer more details about said world in the author's note than in the writing itself. She may do an apt job at depicting aspects of Indian mythology, but the actual fictional world in which Marinda resides receives extremely little attention. What time period are we in? Where exactly are we? What are the social norms and expectations? What are gender dynamics like (especially important considering Marinda seems to violate any that I would expect to exist)? Class dynamics? Nothing seems grounded, it's all just suspended tropes that are reasonably well-written but don't offer enough reason to become invested.
Even as the novel places its emphasis on religion and government, we're given virtually no information about the political reality until the end of the book nor do we receive context on why any of this matters in the first place, besides in the context of Marinda's character which still after everything felt lacking.
Like with any writing, there needs to be something to make us care. Good writing moves beyond the needs and desires of the protagonist and finds context within the larger world itself, hopefully not in the last fifty pages. In rare situations, usually with exceptionally good books, that protagonist may be enough to create that kind of value, but the character has to be well-constructed and there have to be tangible moments/images/items to hold onto or some kind of intense intrigue to hold you until more development.
Marinda didn't do it for me: it felt like every plot twist and reveal just undermined her intelligence and agency, making her look more foolish and naive for the sake of adding much needed complexity and movement to the plot.
Her salvation might have been in her relationships, as she so ardently sought to define herself in the context of others, yet even they lacked strength and substance; her friendship with Iyla was toxic and unhealthy, her connection to Gita seemed to have so much more potential at creating complexity but didn't receive enough attention, and her romance with Deven was horrifically rushed and thus felt unrealistic (a point I'll discuss in a bit). Her relationship with Mani seemed designed to be the saving grace, but it still felt like too much was staked on one connection that, again, was repeatedly undermined.
Maybe when it comes down to it, it was a problem with the narrative point of view itself or the act of constantly emphasizing telling vs showing. There seem to be a lot of things off with the portrayal of what was supposed to be a heroine whose agency and livelihood was twisted to benefit others at great personal cost. This should be a hit, but it felt completely off for me.
The other main killer of my interest and respect for this book was the romance.
A commonplace in most YA novels now, there's almost always some kind of love interest or tension or triangle or whatever. As a feeling human being who herself enjoys romance and love, I'm usually all here for it. But more and more I'm finding that love interests and romantic relationships seem to be integrated perhaps only to check something off a list, and don't receive the necessary attention and development to make sure they're good. Instead they become cheesy and usually feature bad flirting (the dialogue in general in Poison's Kiss often felt stilted and unnatural, but especially in the context of romance) and again, undermine the characters and the actual plot itself.
This is a good example of the latter kind.
The book's description itself iterates that the turning point lies in Marinda receiving "orders to kiss Deven, a boy she knows too well to be convinced he needs to die." Let's take a second to let this sink in. This seems to establish that Marinda knows Deven well. While most of us might not need to know people that well to be convinced they don't need to die, we don't usually go about structuring such a fact like this.
Placing emphasis on how well Marinda knows Deven seems like a mistake considering she knows him for all of, what, two or three days, and also knows virtually zero actual information about him. But don't worry, she's willing to stake her life, her brother's life, and her friend's life all on her love for man she met two or three days ago.
Talk about unrealistic and rushed. There is almost ZERO development into who Deven is by the time they become potential love interests, and we (or Marinda) don't really find out anything about him until the second half of the book. I'm pretty sure you can't just tell your readers to be invested in a relationship for them to be, you actually have to give them a reason, preferably several, to care.
The whole plot becomes guided by Marinda's affection for Deven. Her rebellion against Gopal and her forced work as an assassin is not mobilized because of her morals and her own agency, but because she feels attraction to someone she met days ago. She's literally willing to suddenly risk it all because of him, not because of herself or her brother who is deemed the most important person in her life.
This is all also ignoring the fact in that Marinda's inability to kiss someone without killing them ought to then logically become an extreme point of tension in her potential relationship with Deven, but is instead almost immediately dissolved. When working with such a powerful and emotional aspect of this folklore, the idea that someone's kiss is not even their own, that it's been completely usurped to do evil and they're cut off from traditional expressions of affection, should be something that is massively emphasized if you're focusing on romance. But instead, again it's undermined. Even when placed in the context of her relationship with her brother, it's emphasized as significant, this potentially unraveling force in Marinda's life, but it still doesn't carry the weight that it could.
All of this makes no sense to me. Once it became clear that that's where the romance in this book was leading, and that I was supposed to be cheering for some affection that should have been meaningless if grounded in reality, it became extremely difficult to continue reading.
If Marinda is supposed to be a strong-minded heroine interested in defeating evil and securing freedom for her and her family, why does accomplishing it depend solely on her connection to Deven? It's literally his family, his intervention, his support that enables Marinda to accomplish her goals. If that's intended and is supposed to illustrate some thematic aspect about her lack of independence, it doesn't come across.
Instead, the whole thing seems somewhat thoughtless and lacking substance. This is supposed to be a story which pays "homage to the origins of the visha kanya myth," but instead grounds it so intensely in a relationship which receives almost zero development and is just forced together.
If you're going to write about love, if you're going to have your protagonist fall in love with someone, you need to write it in a way to where your readers fall in love too. It has to be real and it has to feel natural, not forced.
If you cannot do that, or do not want to, then just cut it out. Give me more of Marinda's story and her fears and her memories and her desires. Give me more of her instead.
In conclusion, this feels like it needed to be re-drafted again before being published. I'm not sure how much time was spent writing and editing and revising, but it needed a lot more love and attention. Writing is absolutely extremely fucking difficult, yes, but good writing requires that kind of time and scrutiny. Does every single scene bring something important to the table? Are there moments which feel unnatural, where you should be showing vs telling or telling vs showing?
This book doesn't feel like it got enough of those questions or was under enough scrutiny. It's probably better than a lot of YA novels that have been published, but that speaks more to the frequent flops within the genre rather than to the strength of this. I think this truly could have been a masterpiece, this folklore offers such a beautiful premise and space to deliver such a powerful story. But the writing just doesn't do it.
serafinapekkala's review against another edition
5.0
The rare "can't put down even though you need to walk your dog" book. Importantly, no sex so only limitation is on the level of the reader.