Review--Poison Princess by Kresely Cole

She could save the world—or destroy it.

Sixteen-year-old Evangeline "Evie" Greene leads a charmed life, until she begins experiencing horrifying hallucinations. When an apocalyptic event decimates her Louisiana hometown, Evie realizes her hallucinations were actually visions of the future—and they're still happening. Fighting for her life and desperate for answers, she must turn to her wrong-side-of-the-bayou classmate: Jack Deveaux.

But she can't do either alone.

With his mile-long rap sheet, wicked grin, and bad attitude, Jack is like no boy Evie has ever known. Even though he once scorned her and everything she represented, he agrees to protect Evie on her quest. She knows she can't totally depend on Jack. If he ever cast that wicked grin her way, could she possibly resist him?

Who can Evie trust?

As Jack and Evie race to find the source of her visions, they meet others who have gotten the same call. An ancient prophesy is being played out, and Evie is not the only one with special powers. A group of twenty-two teens has been chosen to reenact the ultimate battle between good and evil. But it's not always clear who is on which side.

After reading it, I'm not sure how I feel about Kresley Cole's Poison Princess. Not I'm not saying I disliked it, not at all. But yet, I can't say I totally loved it either. It's one of those reads that kind of falls in between.

Granted, some of my struggles might of had to do with this being the first book in the series. There's so much to learn and so much that's unknown. That unknown is what really causes problems for me, because I feel like on some level our characters know something that we don't. Evy might not know exactly what's going on with herself, but she has some vague ideas, but to me, I'm not sure where her ideas came from.

The gist of the story is that the world has had a sort of apocalyptic attack. There are survivors and one of our first unknowns is what the heck just happened?! There was a flash and thousands of people died, turned to ash. Evy is among the survivors and so is Jackson Deveaux, the new boy at school who creeps her out by always staring at her. But Jackson is tough stuff, he's going to survive this mess the world finds itself in and when circumstances leave Evy with no other choice, she joins him on his quest to Texas to find other military type survivors--for there is a bad group of militants who are wreaking havoc on anyone and everything. And since this is the end of the world, females are sparse and Jackson knows that they will have "special" plans for Evy.

Evy and Jack don't quite get along at first. Or for awhile. Evy sort of comes off as stuck up at first. I just felt like she did think she was better than Jackson and his Cajun friends. Jackson isn't a hick or anything, he's one of those guys that comes off that way with his accent but is really smart. Plus he can kick serious ass. Evy isn't really quite normal herself, so that also bugged me that she thought sort of low towards Jackson and his friends. She has quite a few "hallucinations" and she hears voices in her head, multiple ones, and then there's the weird thing that happens to her with plants. They seem attracted to her and will do her "bidding". So yeah, Evy isn't too normal herself.

And therein lies my trouble with the book. It seems Evy's grandmother knew what Evy was meant to become. But there's a lot of dancing around the topic it seemed. True, we get these hints and visions of another person with another life and there are more people like that, and like Evy as well. It kind of delves into the major Arcana from the Tarot cards, hence the series name. But I guess I was still confused as to what that all meant. But like I said, it is a first in the series, so maybe we are meant to know what's going on.

There was a bit of budding romance between Evy and Jackson, naturally. Although I was wondering how things would turn out since Evy does start the novel with a boyfriend. I have to say, I enjoyed Jackson's character. Evy could speak Cajun French, which he and his friends tend to use at school, so I loved that she had one up on him, but she never told him otherwise. But as I said, Jack's a smart guy and he figures things out on his own. They didn't have the insta romance connection which I loved! Romance that builds is always better than the "Hello, I love you!" kind of thing. But even still, they had a lot of struggles and obstacles between them before any romance could actually start and then still there are more obstacles keeping them apart.

The pacing was...moderate. I felt like for the story it told, this was a good thing, but of course, here I am finished and left with so many questions of what just happened at the end. The story goes on as Evy telling everything that just happened to a stranger, who we learn right away is a bad guy of sorts. So when we finally get back to the present moment after Evy's story is done, I can't figure out how she ended up there and how she knew the things that she knew. We get some minimal explanation but I still feel like I grasping at straws here trying to figure it all out.

But still, I have to say that it was definitely an intriguing read! I found myself wanting to read it to learn more--even though I kind of didn't--but also because I loved the dynamics between Evy and Jackson. And now I might have to get the second book as well, just to find out what happens between them! Also upon reading the description on Goodreads and seeing the new guy, I am definitely eager to see what spawns from that!

Despite my minimal confusion with a few things, I do have to say that this was quite the story! It's a pretty unique storytelling matter as well. So I might just have to make yet another trip to the bookstore this weekend! Oh my poor, poor wallet!


Overall Rating 3.75/5 stars--yes, the awkward rating. I did find myself struggling at times to comprehend what was going on--mainly with the visions and what not Evie kept having and trying to puzzle out what it all means. Other than that I would've given it four stars for sure!