Poison Girls

By: Cheryl L. Reed

Narrated by: Natasha Soudek

It's the summer of 2008. Chicago's Hyde Park senator is running for the White House, the city is vying to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, and "Poison", a lethal form of heroin, has killed more than 250 people, including dozens of suburban girls from prominent families.

Natalie Delaney, a crime reporter from the Chicago Times, discovers that daughters of Democratic powerhouses are the real targets. Obsessed with finding who is behind the killings, Natalie becomes entangled in an underworld where drugs, cops, gangs, politics, and privilege collide. Risking everything, this reporter becomes the story....

©2017 Cheryl L. Reed (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Touching, salty, brutal, organized, lost, powerful and tragic." (Janet Burroway, author of Writing Fiction)

"An ambitious book, noirish, Dickensian in a modern way, and rooted in the realistic tradition. It tells a complex story." (Stuart Dybek, MacArthur "Genius" Award Winner and author of The Coast of Chicago)

"A gritty story of a Chicago reporter's infiltration of the city's toughest neighborhoods during a heroin epidemic, written by a great new voice in crime fiction. Noir fans and readers of Laura Lippman will love Poison Girls." (Jamie Freveletti, internationally best-selling author of Dead Asleep)

That ending was disappointing

I really loved this book until the ending. The entire book was full of twists, turns, intricate details, excitement, sadness etc. Then that ending. It felt as though the author ran out of time and just slapped an ending that did not go along with the rest of the book. Going from a highly dramatic scene to a “they lived happily ever after” ending all in one fell swoop was so disappointing. This book could have been so much better had the author kept the same style of writing all the way to the end.

The narrator was awesome! I got lost in the story and not annoyed by the narrator. I was never confused as to which character was speaking. Brilliant job. And the different dialects were on point. Just a fantastic performance. I wish this narrator was performing the book I’m currently listening to. As I stated already, the narrator and her performance was perfect. Applause 👏🏼

Character development

I did not like the voice(s) of the reader. Plot was very good with lots of twists.