Several of my friends go to a Romantasy Book Club at our local library – so many, in fact, that I’ve started reading the books because I was talking about them anyway, so I may as well – right?
You never know, I might even actually turn up to the book club one of these days… maybe.
The Poison Daughter by Sheila Masterson is one such Book Club book – whether I go to book club waits to be seen, but I’m going to chuck a bit of a review on here in the meantime.
The Blurb:
Every person Harlow Carrenwell kisses dies immediately, and that’s the way she likes it. The poison-lipped youngest daughter of Lunameade’s magical founding family has used her power to annihilate their opposition.
Her first husband is in the ground. Her mysterious new betrothed is next.
But Harlow has a secret. When she’s not acting as an assassin at her parents’ whims, she moonlights as a vigilante hunting abusive men in their walled-off city.
Meet a man. Lure him in. Kill him with a kiss. Until one night Harlow kisses a mark and he doesn’t die.
Worse, the man immune to her kiss is her new betrothed, Henry Havenwood, and now he knows about her double life. The only way to protect her secret and her city is get close enough to Henry to figure out why the Havenwoods have reappeared after years of silence and what they have planned.
Cursed with a husband she can’t kill and trapped in a fortress surrounded by vampire-infested woods, Harlow’s survival requires her to do the impossible: Make the man who knows she’s a killer fall in love with her anyway.
I really enjoyed this book for a multitude of reasons – firstly, our main characters were both aged around 30. They were grown ups with history and opinions of their own, which is always refreshing in Romantasy. Yes, our leading lady was a little cloistered in some ways, because her entire world had consisted of the walled city she grew up in for 30 years, but she was worldly and mature in other ways, which struck a nice balance.
I enjoyed the magic system of the books, and the lore felt thought through and comprehensive, with a nice twist on ‘normal’ vampires. There was a lot of political slipperiness as to be expected when two powerful magical families clash, and I enjoyed the twists and turns and working out who to trust.
There was a pretty solid plot running through the story that stood by itself, it wasn’t just vaguely shoved in so that the romance could exist.
That said, a few of the smutty scenes did feel a little performative. Most of it was fine, and fitted with the characters and plot, but the odd scene just felt too much – like there had been too long without any steam, so a ‘moment’ would get forced in somewhere.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and it had a pretty satisfying conclusion. It’s been so long since I read an actual stand-alone that I found it super refreshing! There was no twist on the fourth page from the end throwing everything open ready for another book, it just… finished.
My only two real complaints, one is just a ‘Me Problem’ and the other was an incredibly minor issue with one of the two narrators of the audiobook (I read some of this on my Kindle and also listened to some in audio format).
The narrator issue was that the male narrator’s very lovely deep voice happened to be of a similar frequency to the sound of my car’s engine – so when listening whilst driving I had to turn up all his sections to hear more than just a sexy rumble of indistinguishable noise… and then the female narrator was VERY LOUD and scared me when her parts started.
The Me Problem was the discovery that I really, really dislike the nickname ‘Hen’ for Henry. I dunno, it just jarred and made me cringe every time one of Henry’s friends dropped it into conversation. I hate it. But I have no rational reason why, so that’s entirely on me.
Overall, I gave The Poison Daughter a whopping 4.5 out of 5 stars, and I will be keeping an eye out for any further books by Sheila Masterson in the future.
I decided to use this book to tick off ‘enemies to lovers’ on my Bingo Challenge card.
This was book number 56 finished in 2026 – I have sailed past my yearly target of 52 for a change. No panic reading in December needed for once!
