Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy

Evie and Jack reminded me a lot of a teenage Mackayla and Jericho from Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series. A lot. Evie starts out as this Southern beauty with a sweet if superficial disposition who begins seeing things that can’t be real–terrifying things. Jack is the wordly wise bad boy without an inch of softness. He’s ruthless and hard and he forces Evie to survive in the new world they find themselves in. Like Mackayla, Evie isn’t a shrinking violet. She surprises Jack again and again with her tenacity and resourcefulness. He mocks her and expects her to break, when she never does, we start to see the hidden depths of Jack.

With a couple as seemingly mismatched as Evie and Jack–she’s practically Southern royalty, he’s a dirt poor Cajun with a criminal record–you can imagine the romance was anything but simple. It was a slow simmering heat that fought through prejudice, mistrust, jealousy, survival needs, and enemies at every turn. But Cole knows how to deliver romance, and in POISON PRINCESS, she shows that younger characters can fall just as hard—and they take their readers with them.

As delectable as the romance was, part of the reason it worked so well was because of the raw and frightening post-apocalyptic world they were thrust into. There are slavers and cannibals, magic and zombies, dust storms and drought. Food and water are almost as scarce as women after the Flash. It’s as treacherous a landscape as you can imagine, and all the while that they are traveling, Evie is plagued by visions and burgeoning abilities that are potentially more dangerous than the world around her.

POISON PRINCESS is a brilliant debut that will snare readers of all ages with its vivid post-apocalyptic world, engrossing romance, and novel magic based on Tarot cards. The next book in The Arcana Chronicles just shot to the top of my wishlist.

Sexual Content:
Kissing. Mild sensuality. References to sex. References to rape.