Wooooo boy. Sharing my Fable.co review here of {The Poison Daughter by Sheila Masterson}. That was…. a lot.
As is tradish, below there be spoilers so proceed at your own risk!
⭐️⭐️⭐️
SHEILA. Ma'am.
That was… a lot. A lot of everything. Some of it good. A lot of it not so good. I’m not sure I can actually describe it in any singular way. For a moment there I genuinely thought this review might just be a full page of sweating emojis. (Honestly, it’s still on the table.) All I can say with any semblance of confidence is that it was nothing less than relentless.
What the hell does that mean?
It means this book punches you in the face with everything. There are no light tippy-taps on the cheek here. You're in a fist fight for your life on every page and there is no moment to take a breath. Weirdly, I don't mean that it's action-packed or even fast-paced. Quite the opposite. It's drawn out and takes its sweet time moving forward, but somehow even the languid pace punches you right in the face with just how languid it is. It is the most languid anything has ever been. Extreme languidity? (Is that a word? A completely unnecessary word? It is now and based on the writing I know Sheila would want it this way.)
And the excess doesn't stop at the pace. It's the prose. The characters. The plot. The spice (MY GOD THE SPICE). This book is the personification of that person who gives you way more information than you will ever need. It's TMI in literary form. It's a three-volume essay when all we needed was a blurb.
So let's start there.
This book is, overall, a bloated mess. I still cannot believe it's a standalone. There is enough lore, world-building, political maneuvering, and complex family dynamics in here for a 3–5 book series. You guys know me - I love deep world-building, and I love when we take the time to let things exist so we can build relationships to them. And honestly, it's impressive how wholly realized this world is. But my goodness. This was too much. It felt like I was reading it for a hundred years. It’s nowhere near the longest book I’ve read this year but yet, I aged. My TBR aged. Sheila crammed in so much detail it was almost overstimulating.
Exhibit A: there is a whole scene where we follow the FMC into a back room of a bar to steal a bottle of wine to drink while she waits for something.
See how quickly I said that sentence?
In the book, we are with her as she slowly makes her way to the room. Breaks into the room. Searches for the hidden compartment where the wine is. Peruses the bottles. Takes a bottle. Wanders to the back outside of the bar to sit and drink it.
She drinks it.
Once she's done, she goes back to what she needed to do.
This. Took. Pages.
Riveting. Truly!
The wine doesn't progress the story. The searching of the room doesn't provide context to the character or her relationships in any way. We just… needed the passing of time described in excess, I guess. I truly believe this book may be 200 pages too long. Trim them, and we might have something that feels a little more like a book and a little less like being punched in the face by one.
Because there is some really good stuff underneath the mess, and when it's good, it's excessively good. (Of course it is. Nothing in this book knows how to be moderately anything.)
It starts incredibly strong. We get a deep understanding of the universe we're in, the family dynamics, and our main character, Harlow. It’s different enough to stand out as something fresh in the romantasy genre while still retaining tropes, world-elements, and creatures that feel familiar. Additionally, this book works very hard to say very important things about very important issues. I know that sounds scathing, but I mean it with sincerity. There are meaningful, dark themes here that deserve some light shone on them: abuse, family violence, trauma, manipulation, assault. The pain women are forced to endure and manage, both in private and in public. How women are perceived as objects, as tools to control, as pawns in the game of men. It's about fury and righteous retribution, and the pieces of ourselves we're forced to hide in the face of unimaginable violence. I was immediately drawn to Harlow. I understood her, rooted for her, and was excited to unpack all of her trauma, her secrets, and to burn down the world with her.
But all that intrigue and potential gets lost. Lost in the never-ending angst that never seems to let us move forward. In family secrets hiding behind every corner. In clearly telegraphed twists yet to come (OMG GUYS YOU SEE COLOUR WHEN YOU FALL IN LOVE I WONDER IF THAT WILL HAPPEN LATER). In the painful and relentless use of the nickname “Lovely," (UGH), the pursuit of “intimacy” (BLECH) and so much chuckling into necks. (So many necks. So much chuckling.) Oh. And of course, getting boned by your husband in public. Yup. A lot of times.
Look, I'm not here to kink shame, and I won't pretend I didn't have a delightful time despite it not quite being my thing. But boy oh boy is this yet another thing done relentlessly. At a certain point I just wanted to ask - can't we just… love each other yet? Behind a door, maybe? Doors exist in this world. I checked. They were very thoroughly described.
All this potential disrupted by the middle of this book going in circles. The people of Mountain Haven distrust Harlow. She does something reckless to defy her husband. She likes it when he humiliates and/or takes her in public. She gets scared of her feelings and wants to bolt. He tells her never to run from him (HUH I WONDER IF THAT'S A HINT FOR SOMETHING LATER), but she frequently does, to no actual effect (except that one time). I truly thought that running was dangerous, that it meant he'd chase her… you know because that’s what he said he’d do. Turns out chasing might be more my thing, and turns out I got all excited for nothing. Womp womp. At one point they literally go on a jog together. After he told her to NEVER run here because it’s dangerous. Okay. Cardio! How romantic. A threat always seems to call Harlow back home, where she's forced back into her family trauma, fear for her sister, and hatred of her parents before she inevitably returns to Mountain Haven, and the cycle repeats.
Rinse. Repeat. Public sex. Repeat.
Except sometimes we sprinkle in verbal and physical assault from a rotating cast of disgusting assholes, which we must fight off in the flimsiest, least fight-ready silk dress of all time. Every time. Who is dressing this woman? Oh wait. It’s Henry. For some reason. And the number of times we trip on said tangled silk dress is (you guessed it) FUCKING RELENTLESS.
Again, it's not all bad. The characters are often legitimately interesting, their behaviours fairly representative of their experiences, pains, memories, and family drama. And those experiences, pains, memories and family drama is truly affecting. It’s hard not to feel something in the darkness of all this. The villains, while often caricatures of bad guys, are truly monstrous. Pretty easy to hate them. The friend circles are a little shallow, but they're voices of reason - logical, loving, and appropriately pleasant. The only people in this book with any chill, honestly. There's withheld information and miscommunication which I normally despise, but it’s not tropey and it’s for reasons that all make sense. These are warring families, after all.
And the romance does feel palpable. The tension and want between Henry and Harlow is definitely heavily physical-forward (GUYS THE SPICE IN THIS IS WILD), but you can see the emotional heartbeat slowly evolving underneath. The moment Henry finally sees colour (WE NEVER SAW THAT COMING) was legitimately beautiful, I must admit. Their final moment of tenderness (aka their first time behind closed doors) when she almost tells him she loves him had me holding my breath. So there's that.
But by the last quarter of this monstrous tome, we've been running in circles at breakneck speed and punched in the face so many times by revelations, twists, turns, and public sex that I am… tired. And I honestly think Sheila was too. Because when it's finally time to wind this party down, we are cutting corners like no one's business.
Whole plot points are conveniently revealed in the final breath of a dying bodyguard. (That dying breath, by the way? At least 20 minutes. Gavin. Sir. Please. Go into the light.) Twists we both did (and did not) see coming are drop-kicked into our guts, quickly and painfully. The final reveal of who Rochelli has been the whole time is so obvious, so clean, so convenient, it’s hard to feel the true impact of it in any meaningful way. It's literally Rochelli monologuing every secret in the book out loud to the entire town of Lunameade, so we can wrap everything in the perfect bow we didn't have time to properly tie over the last 6,000 pages. A town-wide Scooby-Doo unmasking. Minus the dog. Minus any subtlety. Relentless mediocrity.
The only time we slow down here is to spend a full chapter slowly and relentlessly torturing our parents to death. Yup. In the absence of all sense, at least we have revenge.
It's a wild and often insane ride. There's some genuinely interesting stuff in here. Some real spicy moments that managed to make me blush despite my having read much wilder stuff (Anthony Palmini whispering it all into my ears may have helped…). Some twists that made me feel anguish and pain and anger alongside Henry and Harlow (sisterhood is a short path to make a girl cry). But a lot of that good got lost in just all that bad. The drag. The bloat. The circular plot. The rushed ending. The excess… everything.
The reality is we had a solid idea that got lost in the sauce, lost in an exploration of kink that unfortunately overshadowed the actual story.
One thing's for sure - I have no idea how they're going to turn this into a TV series. They're going to have to cut out…a lot. And I'm going to have to sit through it sweating. Profusely. Emoji-ly.
