Women in Horror Month: “This Poison Heart” by Kalynn Bayron
This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron
Bayron is one hell of an author, and I cannot wait to get my hands on This Wicked Fate, the sequel to This Poison Heart. I loved this one, and it’s one of those books where I felt kind of sad when I put it down and could no longer spend time with these characters. Poor Briseis goes through so much in This Poison Heart, all I wanted to go was go to her and give her a huge cwtch.
This doesn’t quite hit ‘horror’, but it’s borderline, and there’s a great gothic atmosphere to the house Briseis inherits. The house is left to Briseis in her aunt’s will, and she moves there with her parents, with Briseis hoping to learn to control her unusual gift while she’s there. Oh yeah - Briseis has an ‘affinity’ for plants, meaning she can make them grow, and many are drawn to her, causing some funny moments when she’s walking down a street in Brooklyn and the trees stretch towards her.
It soon becomes clear the estate doesn’t just hold the key for Briseis to find out more about her powers, but her birth family, too, a mother determined to keep her away and an aunt who bequeathed the property to her. But as strangers turn up on the doorstep and more of the secrets are revealed, Briseis can’t help but wonder what else is hiding on the estate.
Bayron writes her characters carefully and with great affection, vividly bringing them to the life for the reader. There’s good gothic elements to this novel, as Briseis creeps around the house, trying to discover more, under the ever watchful eyes of the portraits around her. There’s skill in how Bayron weaves in different elements of mythology, and though Briseis’ journey veers towards the fantastic, it’s very much rooted (no pun intended) in the ‘real world’. The main issue hanging over Briseis’ and her mothers’ heads is money, as rents are rising for their small florist shop. The estate is a place Briseis can just own outright, without having to worry about affording rent, and ensuring a permanent place for her mothers, too.
The family dynamics in this are absolutely wonderful, and her mothers are encouraging towards Briseis – it’s clear they do just want to see her happy, as opposed to them being absent, or uncaring, or abusive, or dead. They also strive to protect her, while managing to occasionally embarrass her in front of her new friends. And this is another aspect Bayron does so well – Briseis befriends two people in the local area, a girl who is very taken with her, and a boy who she gets on really well with, and Bayron makes it clear there is no love interest in him as they spend more time together and he tries to help her unearth more secrets.
The mythology and worldbuilding weaves itself nicely around the grounded family, and Bayron gives so many hints that things go that little bit deeper, by the end it’s difficult not to feel totally engrossed. Cinderella is Dead was a fantastic novel, and Bayron exceeds even that in This Poison Heart.
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1547603909/
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/This-Poison-Heart-Kalynn-Bayron/dp/1547603909/
Review by Elle Turpitt
Twitter & Instagram: @elleturpitt
I purchased this book.
