“I wanted to know what it would be like to be myself, fully, right from the jump. No secrets, no hiding.”
A captivating and fast-paced story, This Poison Heart is sure to grab the attention of any reader who enjoys moderate action and fantasy. While this book perfectly appeals to a younger audience, specifically 12-15 year olds, it may come off as a bit too juvenile to a more mature audience. The story begins with a seemingly ordinary teenage girl who, to the surprise of absolutely no one, is hiding a mysterious magical ability from the world. Briseis has just completed her junior year of high school, and is bombarded with the stress of her approaching graduation and college programs. Getting in the way of her normal future is her ability to manipulate plants and make them grow; a skill useful to her adoptive parents’ botanical shop in Brooklyn, but disastrous to her social life and normalcy in school. When money gets tight at home and her power grows out of control, she receives the convenient news that she has inherited an upstate mansion from her biological aunt and is thrown into an adventure of mystery, self-discovery, danger, and isolation.
Painfully predictable, this retelling of Greek mythology, The Secret Garden, and Little Shop of Horrors might leave mature readers bored. To give credit where credit is due, This Poison Heart has incredible and diverse representation, and shares the story of found family in a beautiful way despite its formulaic and juvenile nature. Two of the main characters, Briseis’ moms, make for refreshing queer representation, as well as black representation.
Bayron confronts the experiences of birth family versus chosen family, and highlights the differences between the two. I would recommend This Poison Heart to young readers interested in action and fantasy, but I personally wish I hadn’t taken the time to read it myself. The writing style aligned poorly with the age of the protagonist, a detail hardly above detection to a seasoned reader. I applaud Bayron for her incredible ideas and concepts presented in this book, but I wish the execution had done the story more justice.