Blood to Poison by Mary Watson
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Black Authors, Irish Authors, Black Characters, Coming of Age, Magic Users, Modern Fantasy, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy, Various Magic, Witches
My Rating:
Published on: 7th January 2026
Pages: 383
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An epic South African fantasy from award-winning author Mary Watson, for fans of Children of Blood and Bone and The Gilded Ones.

Seventeen-year-old Savannah is cursed. It's a sinister family heirloom; passed down through the bloodline for hundreds of years, with one woman in every generation destined to die young. The family call them Hella's girls, named for their ancestor Hella; the enslaved woman with whom it all began. Hella's girls are always angry, especially in the months before they die.

The anger is bursting from Savannah - at the men who cat-call her in the street, at her mother's disingenuous fiancé, even at her own loving family. Each fit of rage is bringing her closer to the edge and now Savannah has to act to save herself. Or die trying. Because the key to survival lies in the underbelly of Cape Town, where the sinister veilwitches are waiting for just such a girl.

Blood to Poison is a furious and mesmerising story about discovering magic, historical rage and love in all its guises.

This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

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Cursed with anger, Savannah must find a way to break a curse that has claimed the lives of the women in her family for generations before it claims her. The angrier she gets, the less time she has. Blood to Poison is a book filled with magic and mystery, and inspired by the history of South Africa.

Blood to Poison follows Savannah’s steps to save herself from her family’s curse, a blood curse created by her ancestor Hella to curse her enslaver and his family after he assaulted her. Unbeknownst to her, when she laid the curse, she was pregnant with his child, and in doing so, cursed her own child. For generations, the women of Savannah’s family have been cursed with the anger Hella unleashed on her enslaver. Anger can kill them, and the angrier they are, the younger they die. Following the vague clues in a notebook that belonged to her aunt Freda, the last woman in her family to die from Hella’s curse, Savannah discovers the hidden world of witchcraft that most people have no idea exists. With help from new allies, she begins to unravel the mysteries of Hella’s life, starting with who she was before she became a slave.

Part mystery, part supernatural, Blood to Poison is at its core a story of a young woman trying to cope in a society that constantly fights against her. Watson introduces Blood to Poison with an author’s note that provides context for the novel, speaking of her own experience with a family curse and recognising it for what it was: generational trauma. Blood to Poison, she writes, is about magic, witches and self-discovery, and “is inspired by the very real historical trauma and injustice of enslavement and discrimination in South Africa”. Watson’s writing is superb. It’s captivating, drawing the reader into a mysterious and intoxicating world of magic. This isn’t a book with information dumps; the trauma that Watson refers to is very much ongoing, and it’s expressed through her character’s emotions and dialogue. As we watch Savannah wrestle with her anger and try to unravel the past, Watson connects the past and present. There’s a particular discussion with Savannah and her friend Rosie that illustrates how aware their generation is of their own connection to the history of South Africa. Rosie asks her if she thinks about her ancestors, and explains that she does, especially about how they had come from all over the world. So many stories, she tells Savannah, entwined like a double helix inside her.

I found the characters of Blood to Poison easy to relate to, and what impressed me in particular was Watson’s ability to create a book that was so real and gritty while also remaining filled with unique fantasy elements. The world-building is wonderful, the world of witches and veil witches exciting and intriguing. The world Watson has created is visceral and dangerous; people get hurt, they are suffering, and they can and do die. This isn’t a young adult book where things might go wrong, and the heroes will inevitably save the day. Every step of Savannah’s journey to unlock the secrets surrounding her ancestor Hella and her curse is filled with danger, and some of those dangers are ones that are hidden from her until it’s too late.

It’s not just the world-building of Blood to Poison that is authentic. Watson carefully reveals the vulnerabilities in her characters and the complexities beneath the surfaces of lives that seem perfect but in reality are far from it. She juxtaposes them against Savannah, who has always been the epitome of everything that “is wrong”, the angry girl who can do no right. This is very much a book about finding oneself and your people, the people who accept you for who you are, regardless of your faults. By showing that people are complex, they’re not inherently good or bad, Watson shows that the problem isn’t the “angry girls” like Savannah, but rather those who always put them in the box with that label. Around those who let them be their own people and take the time to understand them, they can and will flourish.

I personally found Savannah very relatable. I was (and probably still am to a degree) an “angry girl”. As a disabled bisexual woman, I’ve seen and still see my fair share of injustices. In one scene, Savannah has to relive all the transgressions that her tormentors had visited upon her, and this particularly stuck with me. How many women have been assaulted on public transport? Been taunted on the side of the road? I’m sure I won’t be the only reader who will find something familiar in that list of transgressions.

There isn’t much else to say other than Blood to Poison is a book I wish had existed when I was a teenager. It is a must-read.

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Thank you for reading my review for Blood to Poison by Mary Watson!

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