#AdventBoost Day 4 – Poison Kiss by Ana Mardoll

Today is a second Sunday of advent and I have an extra special boost for you all. Now obviously, I only rec things I like, but this one is a special favorite! It is hands down the best book I’ve read this year: Poison Kiss by Ana Mardoll.

Poison Kiss is a fantasy (poly) romance novel about Rose, a young woman who flees from a frightening fairy realm together with her co-prisoner Lavender. Back on Earth, they meet a silver man named Clarent and discover that the fairy realm is not through with them. Gosh, that was an awful way to describe an absolutely gorgeous book! This is why I hate writing blurbs, hah. Just go read the real blurb for a better hook…

I loved basically everything about this book. The story and worldbuilding are great, both disturbing and captivating. The cast is wonderfully diverse, and the main characters are well-balanced, nuanced and relatable, in different ways. The book deals with some really heavy issues, like trauma, mental health problems, gender identity and identity in general, consent, etc (some more centrally and some more periphirally), and it does so with a lot of care which I feel one doesn’t often see in fantasy book. It also gave me all the poly feels, which you can see in this Twitter thread.

Poison Kiss is written by Ana Mardoll, who is a queer, non-binary, disabled writer from the US. Xie are on Twitter @AnaMardoll and I very much recommend following! Xie seems very sweet, and tweets some seriously interesting, sensible and informative threads, especially about intersectionally, sexuality, gender and tons of other stuff! Survival Rout, the second book in the Earthside series and Poison Kiss‘s sequel, will be out soon and I can’t wait to read it!