I hesitated a little before buying this YA novel, but Belladonna had me at “gothic”, so I could not resist. Unfortunately, Belladonna spends little time on the gothic and focuses most of its energy on the protagonist lusting after two different male characters. Seriously, this is one of the horniest characters I have read about in awhile. I found this novel to be a waste of time, and I definitely will not be reading the sequel(s).

Belladonna is about a nineteen-year-old orphaned heiress named Signa Farrow. When Signa was a baby, her mother was poisoned at a party and died. Signa was poisoned too, but managed to survive, and since then she cannot die, or at least she cannot stay dead. Signa’s father is presumably dead as well, although there is not much mention of what happened to him, so I suspect he will reappear suddenly in her life in one of the inevitable sequels.

After her mother’s death, Signa was raised by her grandmother until her grandmother unexpectedly died, then Signa got shunted around to guardian after guardian, who were each only interested in the allowance they received for acting as her guardian. But like Signa’s grandmother, each guardian met an untimely end, and Signa developed a reputation for being cursed. Signa blames Death for this, and she eats belladonna berries and kills herself because every time she dies, she can see Death and communicate with him (remember, she does not stay dead; she always comes back to life). She evens tries to kill Death (unsuccessfully of course). But as much as Signa thinks that she hates Death, she is also drawn to him and hence the lusty plot.

After the death of her latest guardian, and just months before she turns twenty and inherits her family’s fortune, Signa is delivered by a hot stable boy (the other lusted after character) to her next guardian, the Hawthorne family. The Hawthorne family has their own problems: Signa’s aunt has recently died, and her cousin suffers from the same mysterious illness that killed the aunt; Signa’s uncle is not coping well with his wife’s death and has turned to hosting debauched parties, and Signa’s other cousin is angry because his father will not let him take over the family business. Moreover, Signa’s dead aunt is haunting the Hawthorne estate. In addition to not staying dead, Signa can see ghosts, and Signa’s aunt’s ghost tells Signa that she was poisoned. Signa becomes determined to figure out who poisoned her aunt and who is trying to kill her cousin. This involves putting her hatred of Death aside and embracing the powers that she has and that only he can teach her to use.

I feel as though Adalyn Grace maybe bit more off than she can chew with Belladonna with respect to genre. It is not so much gothic as a murder mystery. The Hawthorne estate is supposed to be haunted, but ghosts rarely make an appearance. The aunt’s ghost shows up long enough to say how she died, then disappears for the rest of the novel until the very end. Really, there is no time spent on evoking a foreboding or thrilling atmosphere. There is a sense of danger in that Signa’s cousin is near death, but Signa’s herself is never really threatened. And then she spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about sex, like there is no urgency to saving her cousin’s life after all?? In addition, the author throws in a feminist subplot about women not needing men to live a fulfilled life, etc. It is all very rushed over so that we can get to the part of the novel that the author spends the most time building up to: the sex scene.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to read books for the sex scenes. Heck, I used to read Harlequin romance novels in my younger years. But in my more mature years, I prefer novels with sex scenes to also have a good balance of plot and character development.