The Prison Healer - Lynette Noni

★★★★☆

Went in totally blind. Had no clue about that major plot twist!

Narrative Voice: 3rd person (limited)
Cussing/profanity: 1/5
Drug/alcohol use: 2/5
Kissing: 1/5
Sex/nudity: 1/5
Violence/gore: 3/5

I started this book knowing nothing, only that it’s highly recommended. I’m glad I read it, and will try to give a practical review.

Okay, so Kiva has been the prison healer in a death prison for ten years, and that already set her up to be a complex character. I was excited to see her character arc. Tipp. Sweet soft boi. That’s it. Protect him at all costs. Jaren was a little cliche for my taste, but I’m just glad he wasn’t a morally-grey, brooding bore. I enjoyed the mystery of his appearance to the prison (I like a dude with a secretive backstory) and wanted to know more. Naari was cool and I appreciated her humanity in the otherwise hellish nightmare of a prison. Mott was also a favorite. The infamous plot twist had me shocked for sure. I’m one of those readers who subconsciously wants to be surprised by such things, so I don’t really dwell on anything too deeply lol and just keeping reading on for the ride.

The setting was much darker than I was expecting which took me aback, with lots of off-page sexual and substance abuse and then a random reveal of self-harm that felt out-of-place. I also disliked the occasional profanity. As for the plot, I wasn’t expecting the elemental trials, and my first reaction was “Oh. It’s one of THOSE books.” However, I did enjoy how the second and third trials were written, I felt the stress and found myself speeding up the audiobook to get to the resolution faster.

However, the trials themselves were kind of…boring? The two week period between trials (why so long?) made for odd lulls in the plot bc it was just Kiva talking to characters and trying to find a cure to no avail, and yet the trials themselves were over in a page or two and weren’t even all that spectacular. So the pacing felt disjointed to me.

At first glance, the book is pretty decent. But there was something off about it that I couldn’t place. Then the longer I thought about it, the more I agreed with other critical reviews, tempting me to lower this rating to a 3, but I’ll stick to my initial thoughts while I was actually reading it. Kiva gets more boring, and sometimes even mean to the only nice characters. Jaren’s attraction to her is kind of shallow and makes no sense with his motives. The more I reflected, especially after the last plot twist, the more potholes I found. The use of the “unreliable narrator” came off as lazy exclusively to preserve the shock factor of the plot twists.

The writing style and majority of dialogue were nothing unique, at some points sounding amateur. Don’t even get me started on the repetition… “Don’t let her die.” My word. I wanted to smack this book, like I GET IT.

While I wouldn’t say this is a terrible book bc it could be it just wasn’t for me, it’s not the best I’ve personally read. It’s definitely written for YA and feels to function more on vibes than logic, which I found disappointing, yet the content gives me pause to recommend to anyone younger than 16. ’Tis a paradox. I’m considering whether or not to finish the series, but I will recommend it to other readers who like to read for vibes only. The endorsement by SJM should have clued me in long ago.

4/5 might recommend but with a warning

*a royal background character mentions she has a girlfriend, it’s mentioned that prison guards sexually abuse/rape prisoners, it’s mentioned a fantasy drug is abused, main character reveals a brief past of self-harm (cutting), another character reveals history of family member high on drugs beating him, a fatal overdose (deed done off-page) is featured, a character’s clothes are burned away and is left nude for a brief time before being covered in a cloak, and crude sexual remarks are made about the main character by background characters
**6 hell, 2 godsdamned, 1 rat bastard, 6 bitch, 6 whore, 1 ass, 3 damn, 1 almost f-word (dialogue cuts off)