Poison or Protect: A Delightfully Deadly Novella (Unabridged‪)‬

It might be a failing of mine, but I’m not one to be super interested in investigating into the backstory of characters I’m not fond of - even if I do agree with the “every villain is the hero of their own story” idea. So after reading The Finishing School series, I wasn’t super excited to dive into Preshea’s book. HOWEVER, it was so good and heart warming and soft?? I adored the whole thing. They were perfect for each other.

All in all, I liked the narrator. She did accents and voices well enough to differentiate characters and keep me engaged with the story. She didn’t do anything so weird or odd that I’d get mentally kicked out of the story. There were two things that kind of got to me, though.
1) She had a very clipped way of speaking and each phrase was spoken with such finality that I’d frequently think she’d reached the end of a sentence before she had. Normally that would really irk me, but I was able to mentally give it a pass because Preshea has always been described as having a severely clipped way of speaking, so I gave this the benefit of the doubt that it was a deliberate choice.
2) She also did this thing where she added an echo effect to lines of character’s internal dialogue that would normally be denoted by italics in text. At first I thought it was a clever way to differentiate internal dialogue from plain narrative, but it started grating on my nerves after a while.
It’s only a novella though, so it neither of those thing got to the point where they ruined my enjoyment of the book. YMMV. If they would bug you a ton, I’d recommend trying the book in a different medium before giving it a pass. I promise it’s worth the extra effort.

I began this audiobook with enthusiasm, having come straight from the Finishing School series, which I enjoyed immensely. Listeners should heed the caveats at the beginning. This story is meant for adults, with many minutes devoted to, how can one put it, tastefully explicit descriptions.

Ms. Carriger does a splendid job of generating sympathy for Preshea, who is a perfectly despicable person and deserves none. Owing to some unresolved daddy issues, Preshea’s misandry casts a dark pall over the whole story. All men are selfish brutes and most of them deserve to be assassinated on principle. Any women who don’t understand this are either näive or foolish. With this background and the knowledge that she has been four times a widow under sinister circumstances, it is somewhat strange that Preshea should suddenly become wistful about the lack of love in her life. Then she meets a man that stirs her interest. A completely unbelievable character, a unicorn, who might be incongruously described as an alpha simp. The rather average care and tenderness he shows in the bedroom is characterized as uniquely generous and giving. And we seem to be meant to feel that in Preshea’s misandrist world where no man concerns himself with the feelings of a woman, she is lucky to have met this one shining exception to the norm.

I’m giving this audiobook 4 stars, but it’s borrowing a star or two from the Finishing School series. It is with somewhat dampened enthusiasm that I will proceed on to Dimity’s book…

Gail does it again with this latest installment in this series!!!! Thank you