A Beautiful Poison by Lydia Kang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery
Content: A mostly non-descriptive sex scene, prostitution is alluded to

 
Just beyond the Gilded Age, in the mist-covered streets of New York, the deadly Spanish influenza ripples through the city. But with so many victims in her close circle, young socialite Allene questions if the flu is really to blame. All appear to have been poisoned—and every death was accompanied by a mysterious note.

A Beautiful Poison is set during WWI amidst the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918. For a good portion of the book I didn't like the three characters that this novel follows, and at one point I almost quit reading, however I stuck it out and I'm really glad I did. In the end, thanks to some growth on their part, I actually came to like a couple of them quite a bit.

It seems to be a rare thing of late for a mystery to keep me guessing so hats off to the author. She kept me guessing throughout most of the book. There finally came a point where things clicked into place and I wondered why I didn't see it sooner. This along with the character growth are the reasons I decided to give this book 4 stars. It's always a good thing when an author can take unsavory characters and turn them into likeable ones in the end.

There were a couple of things in this book that were revealed near the end that my mind had touched on as possibilities but then dismissed, mainly because the author was pretty clever. One thing I did guess from the beginning and I thought was pretty obvious was what was poisoning the character Birdie. There are quite a few different poisons used in this book and it made me wonder which poison the title referred to, or if it wasn't one of those poisons at all, but the poisoning of a life and a mind instead.



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