Yellow Jessamine

August 7, 2020

Wealthy merchant Lady Evelyn Perdanu lives in a city that is slowly dying. She is alarmed when one of her trading ships returns to port with sick crew members. The disease no one has seen before is spreading throughout the city. Victims seem to be eerily fixated on Evelyn, like zombies or possessed creatures, and she has no idea why. Her extensive experience with medicinal plants and toxins might be useful in halting the spread, but at the moment she's distracted torturing an enemy soldier for information and dwelling on memories of poisoning her father and brothers. Evelyn commits despicable acts and seems irredeemable, though Starling (The Luminous Dead) is careful to explain the trauma that has shaped her life. VERDICT Creating a macabre and sinister atmosphere in her horror/fantasy novella, Starling leaves details of the setting rather blurry. Suitable for readers of creepy Gothic tales.--Laurel Bliss, San Diego State Univ. Lib.

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Starred review from June 29, 2020
The past finds ever more painful ways to haunt the heroine of this gorgeous, taut novella from Starling (The Luminous Dead). Lady Evelyn Perdanu is one of the most powerful shipping magnates in Delphinium, a position won through an act of violent self-preservation passed off as tragedy. To the outside world, her male family members died of a mysterious illness. In reality she poisoned them to avoid the marriage they’d arranged for her, leaving herself the lone proprietress of the family empire with only her assistant, Violetta, as a companion. But when a plague arrives in Delphinium on one of Evelyn’s ships, her power over the city is threatened. The illness leaves all those infected as catatonic shells—but before the catatonia sets in, the sick are overcome with a singular obsession: Evelyn herself. Evelyn hides within the walls of her estate—but the illness will stop at nothing until it reaches her. No word is out of place in Starling’s lush tale, which ties each small detail together in a conclusion that will knock readers’ socks off. This powerful dark fantasy is as lovely as it is haunting. Agent: Caitlin McDonald, Donald Maass Literary.