Reviews with content warning for Vomit - Poison Study

The plot was entertaining and Yelena and Valek were very fun characters.

The writing was occasionally graphic and occasionally juvenile, which left me with a feeling of whiplash.

I had a hard time keeping many of the side characters straight. It suffered the weakness that many YA novels do of trying to do too much that ends up not being related to main plotline.

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littlewishling's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

I love this series. Every character from hero to villain feels so real and unique and I love the magic system Snyder has created.

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jgalla's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

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lupin92's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

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sondered's review against another edition

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The main character did not seem different from other YA protagonists. The writing was also meh.

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ayah_reads's review

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medium-paced

3.0

This book was the epitome of "go girl give me nothing" yet tell me why I blew through it?? Wanted to keep reading?? Enjoyed it???

This books is somewhere between good enough and so bad it's good. The characters have no character, I don't even feel like I had a solid description of their physicality let alone their personality (Valek suddenly had black curls three quarters of the way through??), the writing is so basic, even bad at times, literally repeating what's already been told before, the plot is pretty easy to pierce together, many points had obvious connections and YET I still had a fun time???? IDK WHY. This is the first book I've finished in over a month since spending a semester reading Austen and I think it's what I needed - something so bad that I can't in anyway compare it to Austen and can therefore actually read it in peace 🤣

I think a drive that kept me reading was to see the development of Valek and Yelena. It really had me until the last 50 page being like maybe... we're getting...a slow burn??? Even though all the reviews said otherwise 🤣 It's an insta love that you don't think is gonna be an insta love until basically the ending which is a very odd thing and I don't think I've read an insta love like that before?? Insta loves tend happen halfway through so you're very aware it's an insta love. I don't get why authors are so scared to have their mains confess their love in book 3, like give me a slow burn, three book arc, I'll read for the slow burn, I won't loose interest if you develop it well. With Yelena and Valek it was also odd cos they had a decent amount of time together, solid amount of interactions i.e. page time, but there was still no real romantic implication or development in that sense?? Which is why I really thought we were gonna get a "I don't want you to die and I will save you and protect you but idk pssh what are feelings" (think Kaz "I protect my investments" Brekker) and that's what we got for most of the book (from Valek especially), with Yelena feeling a bit more which I'll give it to her cos he really was saving her life left right and centre, Yelena could not catch a break, everyone wanted to kill her 🤣🤣 But we had to have a love confession come from nowhere and ruin the potential 😭😭😭 The ending has me 👀👀 and it would have worked so well with the above slow burn but now it's like...do I...even...care to see it through??

In speaking of them tho, I cannot not mention the age gap !!! Gahhhh WHY. Honestly this whole story could have been aged out of YA and be adult. Yelena goes through terrible, horrific, traumatic experiences, and it would have just made sense to have her older, with the bonus of balancing the age gap. Or Valek could have been younger and the plot shifted a little but gahhhhh I pretended not to see it so I could continue 😬😭

One thing that did surprise me was Yelena being (ambiguously) a person of colour, and considering this is veryyyy earlier YA, I was impressed.

Overall, not a great book but I had a great time! 😂 Now to continue with the second book or read an actually good book is the question....

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juliesbubble's review

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I loved this book! The plot, the characters, the poisons. It all got me hooked and I almost couldn't stop reading.

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itsnotalakeitsanocean's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been added but I guess I'll do a quick rundown of what I did and didn't like of the book.

What I liked

The castle staff felt believable and you could really get a sense of both their overall dynamic serving the Commander and their individual dynamics within their colleague groups. It really helped set up a lot of the intrigue that came later as Yelena navigated her new life.
I was always excited to see what Yelena would do next or what she was planning. I also liked seeing her reflect on how far she'd come and survived at the end of the book.
I liked the fact that
the Commander was transgender and although he had inner conflict stemming from the fact he could be potentially outed, it was not presented as a negative and I thought it was sweet the way Yelena helped him through his inner dysphoria. I think the way he was initially described could have been avoided to have less gender essentialism to it, I think the inclusion of a transgender character was a pleasant surprise.
I really liked the plot twist with the
Criollo. The way it was seemingly benign only for its true horrific potential to be revealed later was good.

What I didn't like

Valek reciprocating Yelena's feelings came out of nowhere for me. And the same could be said for the random sex scene towards the end of the book (because clearly nothing screams sexier than sex in a cold dank rat-infested dungeon).
The villains weren't particularly strong characters and felt like they were cut from the same cloth of evil.
Mogkam especially felt like a stereotypical evil magical advisor to his boss, as if he did what he did just for the sake of being evil instead of having a clear reason
.
One of the side characters, Rand, seems to get left by the wayside after he died - which felt disproportionate to how much a part of Yelena's life in good and bad ways.

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