Poison Princess by Kresley ColeMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
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….
3.5 stars...
So the premise of Poison Princess was pretty interesting, a group of teens represent the major arcana of the tarot cards, and are basically pitted against each other, every once or so century. dun dun dun. The book itself, is between two settings, A.F. (after flash) and B.F. (Before flash).
The flash was the mega solar flare, that...well if you're planning on reading this book, you'll see.
In any case the Flash turns the world into a post-apocalyptic world..and yea..you're gonna have to fight for your right to survive.
On to the characters, (I'm really just going to focus on Evie and Jack). Evie is basically as the summary of the book says a privileged girl, and so at the beginning of the book, she acts and behaves as a privileged girl would. But she's friendly enough. Oh and then of course, she desperately wants to have a normal life. Why do you ask, well she was in the nuthouse. A lot of this I think, causes her to make some not so good decisions in the beginning [honey you do not need to keep a man that badly..nuff said]. But like I said, I think it's more of -"I want to be normal. Everything's fine and so not falling a part. My boyfriend isn't a jerk. He does care for me. etc."-
But at the same time, she's the person who will try to persevere through it all, because after the flash, although she thought herself useless, she had tried her best to help and she doesn't unnecessarily complain and whine. So that's good. And she did this all while thinking herself half-crazy. kudos to you chica. Once she realised normalcy was never going to happen... well let's just say I'm interested to see what she does after this. It's a pity everything had to "crash and burn".
Jack is a mean-ass, jack-ass. I'm sorry. But yeah, he can say somethings that make me want to smack his head and toss him into the bottomless abyss. But Jack is someone with a huge-ginormous chip on his shoulder, and I think it'll take a while before he gets over that. He can come across as a bi-polar jack-ass. But he does care about Evie..he just has a thoroughly messed up way about going over it. It's like one step forward-two steps back with him. He's harsh on her. But he wants her to survive. He protects her, constantly, even when he could ditch her. He likes her, but he obviously doesn't think he's good enough for her, either that, or the distance between the two of them in terms social class really pisses him off. So he'll expect her to be snobbish towards him, etc. but she's not. And then when he acts jerkish towards her, she slams it right back at him. So it's a tug-of-war really.
And despite my...frustrating feelings of them as characters. I do like the writing. It's flippin' Kresley Cole people. And I like how she created the characters, as in you can see where they're coming from. You know them, and I do believe they're going to grow into their own selves. And after how this book ended, will I read the next book when it comes out? Yes. Plain and simple...I don't know if it comes across as I didn't like this book. But I did, the plot is really interesting, and I want to see where Cole takes it. I want to know what's going to happen with Jack and Evie, because I honestly think they both need a good sit down to just talk. I want to know more about the other Major Arcanas. I want to see Evie flip her stick again and get all thorny on those bad cards. I want to see how the events of the last chapter affected her and everyone else. That said I wouldn't call it a cliffhanger. It's just that things happened that can cause interesting repercussions.
So will I keep an eye out on this series? Yes.
