Poison Princess by Kresley Cole

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

Review posted on Demon Lover’s books & More

I don’t usually read YA, but for Kresley Cole, I made an exception. Not only is she one of my all-time favorite authors, I love her rich world-building and swoon-worthy heroes. Her sense of humor is the icing on the cake!

Pay attention to the tarot cards.

I LOVE the idea of each major player in the series identifying with a tarot card. I love that it’s very much like those old Highlander TV show/movies from the 90s-the whole There Can be Only One type of theme where each major player knows that he or she will eventually have to kill one of the people they are with. I think the tarot idea is just so intriguing. I think that this book has bursts of brilliance, but I think that those flashes of brilliance were overshadowed by a weak male lead and at times vague world-building. I wanted to know more about the Flash, and how Evie survived.

Pay attention to the dates.

This series begins in first person pov by someone other than the heroine, and it’s AF (After the Flash) and it’s.. .intriguing. Very intriguing. Then we skip to BF (Before the Flash) with the heroine Evie and first pov from her.

I liked Evie, I know she’s bratty and spoiled, but she’s a teenager, so of course she’s bratty and spoiled. But you know what? Evie grows. She does not end that book the same girl who began it.

Pay attention to her hallucinations/dreams.

The foreshadowing in the dreams is well-done, and very typical Kresley Cole. If you are an IAD fan, I’d say that Evie almost reminds me of a younger Mariketa. The ending was fantastic, and I was very happy with it (I say this because I know others weren’t).

My biggest problem is that I had a really hard time with the male love interest (notice how I didn’t call him the hero?). I wanted a typical strong male lead that Kresely Cole is known for, but I got a drunken teenager. This is realistic, I get it, but in a post-apocalyptic setting, I wanted a hero, or at least a partner for a kick-ass heroine. I love that Evie is well on her way to becoming that kick-ass heroine in this tarot themed “There Can Be Only One” world, but if Jack is going to be her love interest, I want him to do some growing up.

I will say that Cole’s writing is fantastic and gripping, but her trademark sense of humor was missing from this book. I also really want to read the next book because I want to see how this plays out-I’m hoping that the second book will go deeper and delve further into this After the Flash world that Cole has set up.

***ARC courtesy of the author

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