Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder

I read this teen fantasy title on the recommendation of Leila from Bookshelves of Doom, who tends to be bang-on when she raves about a book. In the end I find I agree with pretty much everything she said in her review of Poison Study. The writing style can be a little heavy on the description at times, but Snyder managed to suck me right in from the first chapter and I found the story fascinating. It can be hard to pull off a believable world in a fantasy novel but that's not the case here. The main character, Yelena, and the people she meets are interesting and feel real. The story, about Yelena's reprieve from Death Row in exchange for being a food taster for the commander of the military dictatorship she lives in, was quite interesting and new. The only part I didn't like was when the book suddenly turned into a romance novel about 50 pages before the end. What the f***??? I think the novel would have been perfect without that part, and the only thing that kept me from throwing it across the room at that point was that luckily Snyder did not lose sight of the main, interesting story when she threw in the romance stuff.

Anyway, I'm going to read the sequel so I guess it can't have been all that bad. :-)