I have swirls of writing where I’m really caught up in a project and it feels great, and then times where I value TV binges and human interaction and reading other people’s words way more. I wish! Honestly, I’m the kind of writer who goes days/weeks/months sometimes without actually writing-I don’t need to do it every day, and I usually can’t do it every day. But can a rebellion built on mistrust ever hope to succeed? Together, they form a tenuous pact to unite the commoners and former nobility against the Shadow Society. Forced to hide in the derelict sewers beneath the city, any hope of reclaiming Paris seems impossible-until Josse’s path collides with Mirabelle’s, and he finds a surprising ally in his sworn enemy. But when the Shadow Society assassinates the Sun King and half the royal court, he must become the prince he was never meant to be in order to save his injured sisters and the petulant Dauphin. Royal bastard Josse de Bourbon is more kitchen boy than fils de France. Mira tries to ease her guilt by brewing helpful curatives, but her hunger tonics and headache remedies cannot right past wrongs or save the dissenters her mother vows to purge. After unwittingly helping her mother poison King Louis XIV, seventeen-year-old alchemist Mirabelle Monvoisin is forced to see her mother’s Shadow Society in a horrifying new light: they’re not heroes of the people, as they’ve always claimed to be, but murderers.

An Affair of Poisons by Addie Thorley