A Beautiful Poison by Lydia Kang

A Beautiful Poison by Lydia Kang

My Rating: ★★★★★

I absolutely love this book. I couldn't get enough of it! A Beautiful Poison follows three friends, Allene, Birdie, and Jasper. Two of the three have been at odds with Allene's family for four years, but the trio is brought back together at Allene's engagement party. However, the engagement party ends on a sad note when one of the guests falls to her death. The trio realizes that this was no accident; it was murder, spurring them on a quest to solve it as the people close to them start to fall victim to the killer and a deadly influenza spreads through the city.

Told from rotating perspectives, we get an idea of how each of these characters are as people. Allene comes from money and views everything as a bit of a game and how it will affect her. Birdie is a factory worker struggling to make ends meet in combined effort with her mom and to care for her little sister. Jasper is a janitor struggling to make ends meet while trying to save up for medical school. I struggled to like Allene because she's so blind to the realities of people not in her status or situation, but I really enjoyed Birdie and Jasper as characters as well as the other people who surrounded them.

Two of the things that I love about this book is that it is beautifully written and the mystery is well crafted. I was glued to the pages because it was just so compelling and beautiful.  It's just such a rich book filled with interesting people, beautiful places, but also a sense of realism. It's a historical fiction novel, so it draws from true events and practices of the time. It also brings us into the lives of people from different walks of life during this era with good and bad from each place. The mystery has many twists and turns. I had my own ideas about who the killer was and I was still wrong. I love it when I can develop my own theories, and it's even more fun when the answers make perfect sense even if I am totally wrong.

This is at the top of my list of favorite books of the year. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for future books from Lydia Kang!