Poison’s Kiss by Breeana Shields (review)

A kiss from Marinda can kill a grown man, and her talent has made her an assassin, a visha kanya, for the King of Sundari since she was five. Even knowing she is protecting her country, Marinda hates her work, and her cruel taskmaster, Gopal; she’d leave if it weren’t for her ill younger brother, Mani. Only Gopal has access to the specific medicine that relieves Mani’s suffering, a fact that Gopal taunts her with relentlessly and uses to force her compliance. She is asked to kill a boy she knows and is possibly in love with; her refusal to do so reveals a web of twisted, sick lies that upends her entire sense of identity and family. Wracked with pain and guilt, Marinda is a girl on the edge of self-destruction, and the shame in her narrative voice is palpable, matched only in its intensity by her unyielding love for her brother. The pace is steady until the first plot twist (a doozy), and the subsequent speedy unraveling of every aspect of Marinda’s life will likely leave readers as floored and shocked as it does Marinda. The romance between Marinda and Deven, her would-be victim, is sweet, but this is really a story about Marinda’s unbreakable bond with Mani and the desperate measures she’ll take to protect him. An author’s noted discusses the Indian folklore and Hindu beliefs that inspired the story.