The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste
In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.
Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.
Then an enemy’s iron bullet kills her mother, Venus’s life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother’s killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.’s most influential politicians.
As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it’s hard to tell who to trust…Herself included.
Venus and Janus lost their mother. She was murdered early on in the book. Venus wants to find out who did it and wants revenge. The Grand Witcher offers her that. She brings her the killer to dispose of. But Venus is dragged into a world of witcher politics that her mom didn’t want her involved in. It’s what killed her dad. There is a bill up to pass against the witchers though and Venus knows that it cannot pass. She’s willing to risk her life by brewing more potions that she can to kill the bill. She struggles with protecting the people she loves while doing this. She also finds out secrets from the past and it seems there are very few people she can trust.
I enjoyed the magic system in this. The recoil (think that would be the right word) is pretty brutal and graphic at times. The pacing was decent and I really grew to like both Venus and Janus. I struggled at times in the beginning to remember people and their magic, but I think that’s more because I’ve been sick than anything.
I gave this book 4 stars.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my earc.
Have you read this? Is it on your TBR?
