i was in the mood for some fantasy ya and this did not disappoint!

i loved that the fantasy element was around herbology and poisons, and it was woven so well into a modern, contemporary story. bri and her family move to a small village after her estranged relative leaves her a house, and warnings of how odd the town was were certainly correct...

some strange things begin to happen and bri realises she might not be the only one with these special powers, and she is in much more danger than she once realised.

the elements of mythology were subtle, and built upon throughout the story, and as a fan of mythology this was a welcome surprise!

I loved the horticultural aspect of this. I thought the author's description of plants and nature to be overwhelmingly beautiful and it made me eager to get to know more about flowers and botany.
However, I stopped reading around halfway because I was feeling like an intruder.
Why?
Several times the author passive-aggressively and slyly made reference to her distaste for white people.
Phrases such as "I don't want an old white woman possessing my body." and "This town is...white, but quaint works too." came across as negative and then there was a whole issue with the neighbourhood cops being white and therefore untrustworthy. I understand POC have had tumultuous relationships with authority figures but, other than to highlight this, those police/neighbourhood watch types didn't have any other role. It felt like a "white people are awful" addition that didn't have to be there.
Then when the author wasn't giving snide asides to white people she was emphasizing how black our heroine was.
"I prayed to Black Jesus"
"Bet your black ass"
"Black Poison Ivy."
"Black Snow White."
I don't think I've ever heard anyone really speak like that and it seemed very over the top and fake and it just bothered me that one of the main selling points of the character was her skin colour and it was pushed at the reader relentlessly.
I felt like the author was telling me "You are white and this book isn't for you." so I decided that maybe there was a nuance that I wasn't getting and perhaps I should just leave the book for POC to enjoy.
This was a shame as I adored Bries relationship with her moms and the interaction between 'Mo and Mom' was hilarious and sweet.

This Poison Heart is such a beautifully written fantasy. The world-building is outstanding. The story is well written with an enchanting storyline and well-developed characters that engage from start to finish. The world is atmospheric and feels real with vivid descriptions and rich imagery. Kalynn Bayron has earned herself a spot on my auto-buy authors list. I cannot get enough. Highly recommended. Be sure to check out This Poison Heart today.

I really enjoyed this one. Such a creative a new take on Magic with a Greek mythological twist that I’ve not seen before. Loved the characters and the flow of the narrative. Really looking forward to the next book.

This was a very unique and fascinating concept and I loved it, a very well written fantasy with powerful main characters and an engaging plot line. I can’t wait to read the next one!

I am such a massive fan of this book! I hadn't heard that much about this book going into it, but everything I had was good, and the premise of it really intrigued me. I think Bayron's writing style was great, and not only got me hooked on the story through her description of the sprawling estate and the various plants, but also when writing about Briseis and how she navigated all these new discoveries. The all-female family dynamic with Briseis and her mums was so heartwarming to read, while her more distant female relatives represented this mysterious element that the story held that I equally enjoyed. The twists and turns that this story took weren't unpredictable but that didn't take anything away from them at all. I found myself constantly wanting to get back to this story and I hope to get to the sequel as soon as possible!

Teenager Briseis lives in Brooklyn with her parents, helping them with their flower shop.
Bri is no ordinary teenager - she has the ability to affect the plants around her and can transform them from seeds to fully grown in seconds.
One day Bri receives the news that an aunt she didn't know she had has died and left her estate to Bri.
Bri and her parents decide to swap Brooklyn with the run-down estate for the summer.
It doesn't take long for Bri to discover that there's more to the house and her family history than she could ever have imagined as she finds herself being hunted by a group of people searching for a deadly poisonous plant that can be used to make an elixir for immortality.
Can Bri learn to control her power and use it to protect her loved ones?

I was a little hesitant going into this book as I had mixed feelings about the previous book I read by the author, however, I ended up enjoying this one more.
Bri was a likeable and relatable protagonist, but I did find her to be too trusting and a bit of a hypocrite at times. However, I also felt sorry for her as she didn't really have any friends in Brooklyn and was struggling with her powers.
None of the characters really stood out for me, but I did really like the relationship Bri had with her parents, when she wasn't lying to them.
The setting of the house and gardens were interesting, and I liked the concepts in the book.
My favourite thing about the book was the diversity.
The plot was interesting and held my attention throughout, but there were some plot points that I didn't like, and I wasn't gripped or invested in what happened.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read.

I enjoyed this story and preordered the sequel. It arrived this week and is another stunning cover. I look forward to delving back into this story. I love a book with magic in.
I read this a little while ago and didn’t realise my review had either been missed or didn’t submit properly. Apologies for that!

This was my first book from the author and it definitely did not disappoint. Powerful Black girl magic with a twist of Greek mythology,

This Poison Heart follows Briseis who can grow plants from tiny seeds to rich blooms with a single touch. When her aunt dies and leaves her state to Briseis, she and her parents decide to move there so that Briseis can hopefully learn to control her powers. But the house comes with its own mysteries, an old apothecary, a garden full of poisonous plants only those of Bri's lineage can enter and visitors who may be after something dangerous.

I really enjoyed this one! Plant magic is something I wish I could read more of, so I obviously loved it in this one! Bri's story of learning to control it was intwined with a retelling of Medea from Greek mythology, who I recently learned about so it great to read a book about her!

I really loved Bri and all the relationships she had, there was a really sweet one between her and her parents which is rare in fantasy books. The love interest, Marie, had a really interesting backstory that made me care about her! I did enjoy the plot but think it was dragged out a little too much and could've been shorter but overall it was really good!

I enjoyed Cinderella is dead but for me this didn’t quite live up to my expectations the characters weren’t as strong and whilst I still enjoyed the storyline to s certain extent it didn’t grip me in anyway.

I really liked the concept for this book, the mix of The Secret Garden and Greek mythology was really cool and I liked Bri and loved her mums but I did find the overall plot kind of slow and meandering, and it took way too long for the main plot stuff to start unravelling.

After reading Cinderella is Dead I was super exciting to see what This Poison Heart had in store for me. I was interested to see how dark the story would go and if I could see which myth and tales the story was based on.

I was worried that my enjoyment and enthusiasm for Cinderella is Dead would lessen my opinion of this book. So I did take my time picking this up. And while I felt that the This Poison Heart did start slow, by the end it was a runaway train that just stopped in time.

I really enjoyed getting to know Briseis and her plant powers and watching her grow throughout the book. I enjoyed seeing her relationships with her parents and the plants. And just watching her bloom. I also loved her finding out about the family history and the secrets of the house she inherits.

In the end this was an enchanting read that blended plant magic with Greek Mythology and prehaps The Secret Garden. So much so that I couldn't tell when one part ended and the other end started. I didn't expect so much mythology to be involved but it made the book so much more delicious.

I was invested in the ending. Not only in Briseis but also her family, both adopted and biological, the community (I need to know more!) and get the plant knowledge, that I was sad when the book came to a very sudden and unexpected end. Let me tell you the ending is a huge cliff hanger. So waiting for the next book will be hard. But I cannot wait!

I love this book so much! Can I first say a big thank you to Kalynn Bayron, Bloomsbury and to Netgalley for providing me an arc of this incredible story. I ended up reading 30% through it and loved what I was reading so much that I decided to purchase it so I did and now I have a gorgeous fairyloot edition in my collection as it was available to purchase around the same time. 

Firstly, can I just say if you love lgbtqia+ romance, Greek Mythology, magic through the use of controlling plants then this book is for you! The world building in this novel was fantastic and I just wanted to find out more and more about the world that Briseis lives in which I hopefully will do in the highly anticipated sequel! The way that Kalynn Bayron interwined magic in the world and Greek Mythology was just gorgeous. Speaking of Briseis, her character development was fantastic, everything she did felt natural including her reactions to some...shall we say strange happenings taking place in her life, from random strangers popping up here, there and everywhere to other strange things happening which I am not going to mention because of spoilers.

Secondly, I loved the language used in the novel the way that Greek was incorporated was really cool. I also felt that the pacing was really consistent throughout it too as the story flowed really well throughout it and this really helped the plot too which just kept me hooked from start to finish. I loved how all of these elements were incorporated really nicely together.

So overall, I really loved This Poison Heart and I cannot wait to pick up the sequel!

I loved this book. The pacing was good with a nice amount of time taken to set the background and world up. A diverse cast of characters which is always brilliant to see. As someone with botany training I was bound to love the title but it really immerses you in the story. The author did a great job of acknowledging something many books normally don't which is a character being surprised and intimated by a situation rather than always playing the hero. The mythological background origin is fantastic and well woven into the story but revealed late on to keep the reader in the dark as much as the main character. A few greats twists of betrayal and lies which always livens up a story. Would happily read again, especially before the next one comes out!

This book absolutely blew me away, I tore through it in a single weekend! It's a fantastic book, and such a novel idea. The protagonist, Briseis, has the ability to make plants grow: they respond to her emotionally, so if she's feeling sad, they shrivel up; if she's feeling happy, they start riotously blooming; and if she gets angry, they may even turn violent. You can read this as a metaphor for being a teenager, or being queer: when your emotions feel too big, and too much, and perhaps not socially acceptable, but if you squash them down, you aren't being yourself. It works on all sorts of levels.

Everything in Briseis's life changes one day when she receives a mysterious inheritance - she is gifted a great big house in the countryside by a previously unheard-of relative. This provides a potential solution to her family's money problems, but also involves the risk and the excitement of close proximity to lots of growing things.

Magical realism with an edge of horror, it's creepy, sensuous and luscious in a really dark, gothic way - and it is actual, literal Black Girl Magic!

Diversity and representation are done really well - Briseis is Black, adopted and has two mums, and she herself later turns out to be queer. None of this is heavy-handed; it is mentioned only when relevant to the story.

This was my very favourite out of all the amazing books we recommended in our 2021 Black History Month bookchat!

A lively and enchanting YA fantasy that will surely feature on many best of 2021 lists. Kalynn Baron so an auto-buy author for me!

Having read Bayrons first book i was eager to read this new one! Such an exciting book and i found the character and the world building so interesting!

Refocus those expectations from Cinderella is Dead. I say this not because the book is bad (quite the opposite, I loved, LOVED this book.) More so because of the way this is an entirely different flavour of fantasy. I don’t feel like this can be compared to CID because they are so vastly different in the best way. Personally I love more surreal fantasy stories, or fantasy based in history or mythology and that is what this book serves up so -seriously- well.

I’m forever in awe of Kalynn Bayron’s writing style but that mixed with the presence of Greek mythology in the story really had me gripped. It was that fuelled with the connection to family and the presence of lgbt+ themes really made me smile.

I must say though, as a sapphic I was probably swayed by the presence of plant magic alone.

Things I didn’t like? Pacing. If you loved Cinderella is Dead for the fast paced and gripping theme just be prepared that initially this is far more fleshed out, to the point I was kind of waiting for a while for things to pick up initially. I also felt that whilst the romance shouldn’t be -and wasn’t- the focus, it could have been a little more emotive or gripping.

That said, if you love fantasy, Greek mythology or plants? Grab this. It’s far more fantasy based than CID but I personally prefer that, even if I preferred the pacing in CID I still greatly enjoyed both tales.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an arc for an honest review.

Firstly I really enjoyed reading Kalynn Bayron's other book Cinderella is Dead, so this was an autobuy author for me. Straight away the descriptions of the magic system drew me in and the vivid imagery of the flowers and fields and meadows. The initial florist setting was cosy and warm. The magic system was well thought out and I did find the characters relatable.