Emily May's Reviews > Poison Study

Poison Study is easily one of the best young adult books I have read this year. So far, the genre has become increasingly disappointing to me and I was beginning to lose faith in novels marketed at older teens. What I really don't understand, though, is why Snyder decided* to make Poison Study a young adult book. In my opinion, even though it was good, the book could have been even better if she'd allowed for Yelena/Valek smut and instead marketed the book to a more adult audience. It's not even as if the subject matter was child-friendly, torture and rape-loving villains aren't exactly what comes to mind when you're writing for a young audience. It could have been sexier, grittier and just all-round better as an adult novel.

As a welcome addition the fantasy genre, I was also surprised at how much I enjoyed the story. Fantasy tends to conjure up unwelcome memories of Tolkien and Pratchett, not to mention the elves, goblins and dwarves that often feature in the genre. Never did it for me, I'm afraid. The only fantasy books that have ever really impressed me are those by J.K. Rowling and Paul Stewart, and they were more focused on characters at least resembling humans for the most part, as was Poison Study.

I have to say that I loved Valek as a character and was pleasantly surprised to see how well the romance between him and Yelena worked. It didn't even remotely occur to me at first that he would be the love interest of the novel because he was seemingly selfish, violent and cruel. And also coldly devoid of any redeeming emotion. The way that turned around, through the humour that came out in him as the novel progressed to the multiple times he risked himself to help Yelena (and yet still didn't make her come across as the damsel in distress), was told really well. The rest of the novel aside, he himself is one of the best parts of any book I've read lately.

What I didn't much care for was the drawn out plot with the Criollo(?), it seemed to take too long to get around to something that wasn't particularly interesting; but don't get me wrong, plenty of other stuff is going on with Yelena overcoming her past trauma and the blooming attraction between her and Valek so that the story never really drags. This is usually the part where I say "So... I will definitely be reading the next book in the series", but I actually think I'm going to leave Magic Study and Fire Study after acquiring advice from Tatiana's review and, strangely, a small lilac-haired old woman at the library.

*EDIT Tatiana has informed me that it wasn't Snyder's idea but her publishers... my apologies, Snyder ;)