The Poison Daughter

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A woman whose kiss kills anyone it touches meets the one man it does not kill. She is engaged to him, and her family has already decided he should follow her first husband into the ground. That is where The Poison Daughter starts, and the premise does most of the selling by itself.

Sheila Masterson's standalone is the romantasy that took over the charts this year, and the audiobook has followed it up there. It sits inside the top twenty-five of the entire Audible catalogue and at number one in paranormal romance, in fantasy romance and in enemies to lovers. Zando Penguin Audio put two narrators on it, Laura Horowitz and Anthony Palmini, one voice for each side of a dual point of view.

A kiss that kills, and the man it does not

Harlow Carrenwell is the youngest daughter of Lunameade's magical founding family, and her power sits in her mouth. Everyone she kisses dies on the spot. Her parents have used that as a weapon against their opposition for years, and Harlow has not objected, because on some level she likes the work. Her first husband is already in the ground. The new betrothed is supposed to follow him.

What her family does not know is how she spends the nights they have not assigned to her. Harlow moonlights as a vigilante inside their walled-off city, hunting the men who hurt women. Meet a mark, lure him in, kill him with a kiss. The routine holds until one of them stands back up. He turns out to be Henry Havenwood, her new betrothed, and he has just watched her commit a murder.

That leaves her married to a man she cannot kill, in a fortress ringed by vampire-infested woods, needing him to fall in love with her before he decides what to do with what he saw. Underneath the romance runs a colder question. The Havenwoods disappeared for years and have now reappeared, and nobody in Lunameade knows what they came back to do. Masterson keeps both plots moving at once, which is why the book is as long as it is.

Two voices for a very long listen

The narration splits between Laura Horowitz and Anthony Palmini, which is what a dual point of view novel needs. Palmini is the name romantasy listeners will recognize immediately. NPR profiled him earlier this year as the voice behind most of the genre's current male leads, and he has barely stopped working since. Horowitz takes Harlow, which is the harder assignment of the two. Read her as a victim and the character collapses. Read her as a straight villain and the romance stops making sense.

Almost twenty-five hours is a serious commitment, roughly twice a standard novel and long even by romantasy standards. Go in knowing it is a season of listening rather than a weekend. The audio also carries the bonus chapter from Henry's point of view that otherwise only appears in the illustrated hardcover, so this is one of the rare cases where the audiobook is the more complete edition rather than the convenient one.

Seven novels in, then this one

Sheila Masterson had six books behind her before this happened. She lives outside Philadelphia and writes romantasy: a gothic fairy tale retelling called Song of the Dark Wood, a four-book quartet called The Lost God, and a next-generation spinoff, A Legacy of Stars. On her own website she describes her job as stabbing beloved side characters and inventing new ways to make readers cry, which is a fair warning about what she does to Harlow.

The Poison Daughter was her seventh novel and she published it herself. It went viral, sold more than a quarter of a million copies with no publisher attached, and reached the USA Today bestseller list three separate times before Slowburn acquired it. It has since become a number one New York Times bestseller, and Hulu is developing a drama series from it with Masterson attached as an executive producer.

That route matters to a listener, because it means the book was shaped by readers rather than by a marketing plan. It also explains a book that is stranger than a debut committee would allow. Reviewers have singled out how carefully it handles trauma and chronic pain, which is not the note you expect from a novel sold on a poison kiss, and it is the reason it holds up past the hook.

No series to sign up for and no cliffhanger. One standalone, a heroine who never asks anyone to forgive her, vampires at the edge of the map, and two narrators who get the register right. If you have run out of Sarah J. Maas and Carissa Broadbent, start here. The Audible trial covers it.