Book Review: Poisonous, Max Revere- Book #3

Author: Allison Brennan
Book Name: Poisonous
Release Date: April 12, 2016
Series: Max Revere
Order: #3
Genre: Mystery/Suspense
Overall SPA: 4 Stars

Blurb: Teen-aged Internet bully Ivy Lake fell off a cliff and few people cared … except her mentally-challenged eighteen-year-old step-brother, Tommy. He loved her in spite of her cruelty. He’s distraught and doesn’t understand why his blended family is falling apart. After a year, the police still have no answers: Ivy could have jumped, could have been pushed, or it could have been an accident. With too many suspects and not enough evidence, the investigation has grown cold.

Tommy thinks that if someone can figure out what happened to his step-sister, everything will go back to normal, so he writes to investigative reporter Maxine Revere. This isn’t the type of case Max normally takes on, but the heartbreak and simple honesty in Tommy’s letter pulls her in. She travels to Corte Madera, California, with her assistant David Kane and is at first pleased that the police are cooperative. But the more Max learns about Tommy and his dysfunctional family, the more she thinks she’s taken on an impossible task: this may be the one case she can’t solve.

If Ivy was murdered, it was exceptionally well-planned and that kind of killer could be hiding in plain sight … planning the next act of violence. Max believes the truth is always better than lies, that the truth is the only thing that matters to gain justice for victims and their families. But for the first time, she wonders if this time, the truth will kill.

Main SPA Evaluation Areas:

Characters: 4/5 Stars
Believability: 4/5 Stars
Personal Opinion: 4/5 Stars

It has been a really long time since I read the first two books in this series and I’m really kind of kicking myself now that it has taken me so long to get back to it as I really enjoyed this book.

I think one of the things that struck me with this is that it managed to hit a lot of personal points for me, which is both good and bad as that can really color how I feel about a book or the characters. The issues with characters that I struggled with or disliked the most were the ones that poked at some of my personal personality trait peeves, but that is actually something that makes everything in the story feel so real.

I still like the slightly different take these stories have on the traditional crime drama. You definitely get some of the elements you would from a crime drama, but from a less rigid and structured standpoint, allowing the story to flow in a different way than if it were a straight up police procedural.

Normally, I like a book that I can figure out the mystery before it actually gets revealed. Every once in a while, it is nice to be surprised in a way that still makes the story work and make sense. I really didn’t expect this to end up the way it did, which was a really nice touch. I have a feeling this might just kick off a reading binge of the rest of the books in this series.