A Fierce and Subtle Poison, by Samantha Mabry

A Fierce and Subtle Poison, by Samantha Mabry

I’ve been doing some work on the back end of this site, and just discovered that I never linked up this review from 2016? And, as I loved the book a whole lot, I would like it to be represented here.

So, here’s my Kirkus column about Samantha Mabry’s A Fierce and Subtle Poison:

In different hands, this book could easily have been one more entry on the long list of stories about boys who are changed by their connections to tragic and surprising and mysterious girls. But thankfully, that’s not the case here: Lucas is our window into the world of the book, but it’s not really his story. Yes, he has an arc of growth—he begins in privileged, self-indulgent apathy and ends up in a more thoughtful, less-self-centered place—but this book is really about Isabel. She’s the one with the redemption arc, she’s the one who makes the big choices, she’s the one who moves the story forward, she’s the one who owns the emotional core.