Review: Poison Princess

 

Poison Princess by Kresley Cole
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Poison Princess is the first of a trilogy (update - the series ended up being many more books than three), with the last book coming out in January. It starts out with every YA Paranormal cliche in the book. 

Evie is a popular cheerleader with a football player boyfriend, trying to decide if she should sleep with him or lose him (the romance is definitely more on the mature end). She has a female best friend that she texts while watching their favorite tv show, and an overprotective mother. Enter mysterious bad boy on a motorbike who ends up being her reluctant partner in history, and the stage is set! 

Thankfully it doesn't continue this way. The paranormal aspect is that Evie has terrifying visions and has spent the summer in an institution being brainwashed and drugged out of them. She's trying to get back to her normal life, but now that she's home, the visions are getting worse. And, intriguingly, growing things seem to respond to her. 

 If you're about to turn away from this book based on the high school romance description, stop for a minute. The first hundred pages show this familiar scene, but this is not just a Paranormal Romance, it's a Dystopia. Everything changes in a flash. The beginning is there to show you what is lost when the apocalypse hits. The rest of the book is dark, violent, and full of confusion, desperation, and death. And yes, romance as well. 

 After the apocalypse, Evie remains soft and naive, and frustrating at times. She still fights the visions and doesn't want to learn what they show her. She can't take care of herself and doesn't really try to learn. However, she does start to change by the end. Romance is a big part of it, but although physical attraction is there from the start, it's more about the changing perceptions of two very different people, which I liked. And there is more to the story than that. Evie is trying to figure out what she is and what role she's supposed to play. It's clear from her visions that she has a role because of powers she doesn't understand, and that there are others like her out there, the Arcana. 

It's the search for answers and the dangers of the new world that drive the plot. I think if you can get through the highschool-ish start, this is a really good intro novel. It kept me reading until late at night. The idea of the Arcana is interesting, and Evie begins to grow a spine towards the end, finally exploring the strength of her powers. I'm looking forward to seeing what she becomes - hopefully a force to be reckoned with. It was just starting to really get going at the end, with enough of those answers and a nice cliffhanger to make me want to pick up the next book. My hope is that book 2 keeps ramping up the tension and action. We'll see what happens.

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