A Fierce and Subtle Poison Author: Samantha Mabry
Pages: 278 (Hardcover)
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
Release Date: April 12, 2016
Source: Borrowed
Purchase: Amazon•TBD (affiliate link)
Everyone knows the legends about the cursed girl--Isabel, the one the señoras whisper about. They say she has green skin and grass for hair, and she feeds on the poisonous plants that fill her family’s Caribbean island garden. Some say she can grant wishes; some say her touch can kill.
Seventeen-year-old Lucas lives on the mainland most of the year but spends summers with his hotel-developer father in Puerto Rico. He’s grown up hearing stories about the cursed girl, and he wants to believe in Isabel and her magic. When letters from Isabel begin mysteriously appearing in his room the same day his new girlfriend disappears, Lucas turns to Isabel for answers--and finds himself lured into her strange and enchanted world. But time is running out for the girl filled with poison, and the more entangled Lucas becomes with Isabel, the less certain he is of escaping with his own life.
A Fierce and Subtle Poison sounded like it was going to be an interesting, unique, and exciting read. Sadly, it was only one of those things. Lucas knows all about the cursed house at the end of Calle Sol. And yet, he and the girl he’s interested in go there anyway, have a little fun, then go home. Well, Lucas makes it home, but Marisol disappears only to have her body washed up on the beach. Then her little sister goes missing while looking for her. This isn’t the first time this has happened, and Lucas knows it has something to do with the scientist and his cursed daughter.
I loved the idea of a mad scientist, his poisonous daughter, and their cursed house, but of course, that’s not what A Fierce and Subtle Poison ended up being about exactly. Yes, Lucas goes to Isabel for answers about the missing and dead girls. Yes, she knows. Yes, she’s poisonous. Yes, her father might have a screw loose. But the story never really went anywhere for me. It seemed like most of the middle was just about Lucas trying to find little Celia, whom I did not care about at all. I had no reason to care that she was missing, other than she was just a little girl, which clearly makes me a monster.
I’m not really sure what else I can say about A Fierce and Subtle Poison. It just wasn’t the story for me. It’s not bad, just not my thing. I was hoping for more of a focus on Lucas and Isabel, since he’s the first person she seems to have reached out to, but there wasn’t much of that at all. In fact, they don’t get along all that well, and Isabel wasn’t nearly as interesting as the stories made her out to be (which I did expect to be the case, but still).
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