Poison Princess (The Arcana Chronicles #1)
Author: Kresley Cole
Published: 2012
My Rating: 
She could save the world-or destroy it.
Evangeline “Evie” Greene has the perfect life, with a best friend and the perfect boyfriend she’s ready to go all the way with. It starts crumbling when she begins to have horrifying visions, and hear scary things call out to her. Evie is desperate to figure out these visions to find out what is real and what isn’t. All she knows is that it has something to do with tarot cards…the Arcana.
Turns out, the tarot cards don’t just tell your fortune. They’re real people and threatening her, wanting to kill her. That’s according to her grandmother who tried to kidnap her when she was younger, though.
Now, after the world has been decimated, Evie has to turn to the last person that she wants to in order to survive, Jackson Deveaux. From the bayou and with a wicked attitude and irresistible grin, this Cajun will do whatever it takes to help Evie, as long as she tells him what she’s hiding in return. But, can she trust him enough to tell him what is really happening to her? That her grandmother wasn’t crazy, and the tarot cards are calling out to her in her head and seeking her out to kill her?
This book. THIS BOOK!
I’ve been told by several people that I need to read Kresley Cole and they were right. I picked up this book at my bookstore, my curiosity certainly piqued at the idea of tarot cards being brought to life as actual people. Such originality. I find the use of tarot cards to be fascinating. I use them myself from time to time so to see them as real people with unnatural abilities gives me the shivers. Good shivers, of course.
I loved how fast-paced this book moved. The pace also felt slow with how much detail there was. A perfect mix, like swirling chocolate and vanilla ice cream together. The amount of detail from the tidbits in Evie’s life and how she’s trying to hold on to it by the very threads that threaten to snap because of her visions and then zooming out to the gain a perspective on what was happening across the world with various dangers that could end her and Jackson was phenomenal. There wasn’t a single moment I wasn’t engulfed in this book. I could not put it down.
The over-dramatic dialogue between Jackson and Evie was superb. I normally don’t go for a book that over reaches in how people interact, but with this being and apocalyptic world and these being two, hormonal teens, it worked SO well. Not going to lie, I ate it up shamelessly. The chemistry between the two of them was intoxicating, turning my stomach to knots. It’s danger boy meets sassy girl and both of them are unrelenting. As if the apocalypse didn’t have enough problems with cannibals and slavers, eh? Then there’s the Arcana, the tarot deck that are real people, and to be honest, this book only hits the cusp of that whole ordeal. And it’s just enough to keep me hanging on curiously because only knowing that they’re all fighting to be the last man standing isn’t enough. There’s got to be more to it.
I can’t wait to read more. I have already ordered the next book in this series because I’ve become quite infatuated with this series. Give me more!
Quotables:
“If Brandon was a good boy but not yet a great guy, Jackson was a bad boy—and already a bad guy.” (Evie, p. 82)
“Evie, people with no hope for the future can be very dangerous.” (Evie’s mother to Evie, p. 149)
“The last two monarch butterflies are thousands of miles apart and flying away from each other. A boy is skateboarding across old Lake Michigan…” (Mathew to Evie, p. 280)
“For as long as you’ve been looking down your nose at me, I’ve been craving you, an envie like I’ve never known.” (Jackson to Evie, p. 341)
More to come soon…
-K.
P.S. Song today? Teenage Wasteland by The Who.
The Scarlet Reader 