The Poisons We Drink

The one good thing to come from Review-Bomb Gate is that I get to tell you about this book, a book I probably wouldn’t have known about without The Situation. I get to tell you about family relationships, and allegories for real-world injustices, and magical girls who will stop at nothing to protect their family, both blood and found. I get to tell you about queer representation, and how love really will save us. You get a wonderful book full of how beautiful and how terrible and cruel the world can be. But like I said, love will save us. Recommended By Lauren M, Powells.com

In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.

Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.

Then an enemy's iron bullet kills her mother, Venus's life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother's killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.'s most influential politicians.

As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it's hard to tell who to trust... herself included.

Bethany Baptiste is an inner-city educator by day and a young adult SFF novelist by night. If she's not writing a lesson plan or a story, she does retail therapy in Florida bookstores and takes scheduled naps with her three chaotic evil dogs. You can visit her at bethanybaptiste.com or @storysorcery on Twitter.