Review of “The Poison Diaries: Nightshade” by Maryrose Wood

Note: This review is a bit spoilery regarding the first book of the trilogy. The review is NOT spoilery for the second book, except for the Discussion Section.

This is the second installment of a trilogy set in the 1700’s in England, of which only the first two volumes have yet been published. In the first, we learned that Jessamine Luxton, a beautiful young girl of 16, has learned healing arts from her father Thomas. She falls in love with a young man, Weed, who has come to live with them, but then she becomes mysteriously ill. At the end of the first volume, she has recovered, but at the price of her own soul, and that of Weed’s. Her father’s soul, she discovered, was already lost. (See my review, here.)

At the beginning of volume two, Jessamine leaves her home to find Weed, who has disappeared. As she travels to London though, she is not alone, but accompanied by a dark force unleashed by her father’s garden of poisonous plants. By the time Weed finds her, she is not the girl she used to be, and Weed must take his own journey to try and save her from the depths of self-destruction.

Discussion: This is one of the darkest YA books I’ve read in a long time. A hint of what is to come can be found in the heroine’s name.

Jessamine was named for the vine with the botanical name Gelsemium sempervirens, sometimes referred to as yellow jasmin. One of the most notable attributes of the plant is the beautiful fragrant flower it produces, but all parts of the plant are extremely poisonous. This turns out to be the case with the character Jessamine as well. In spite of her outward beauty, she turns poisonous to all in her orbit.

The problem for me, however, is that the author has Jessamine become immoral because of the influence of the evil Oleander, Prince of Poisons, whose power has been released by her father’s poison garden. It is Oleander who drives both Jessamine and Weed to commit the evil acts they do. I just don’t know how I feel about the whole “the devil made me do it” take on their behavior. Sure, Oleander could be seen as a metaphor, except that he is not – he is depicted as an actual character. Furthermore, he is pretty much omnipotent since he can get in their heads, so it’s not as if the characters are able to exercise good judgment about the choices they make. In fact, they are almost “excused” because of Oleander’s influence, and that means being excused over some pretty egregious acts, including murder, adultery, drug addiction, betrayal, and thievery. Moreover, Jessamine has additional reasons to think she might have been “destined” to be evil, and so there is the additional issue of fate versus self-determination.

Unless you are the sort that does not like fantastical elements to your books, this series is quite interesting, and raises numerous points to think about and discuss, among them: what defines love, what is necessary to sustain it, and what poisons it.

Evaluation: It’s not impossible to start the series off with this second book, but you will miss out on some nuances, and maybe even more importantly, you will miss out on the halcyon times when at least some of the characters were suffused with goodness.

Rating: 3/5

Published by Balzer & Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins, 2011

Advertisement