Not to my liking at all. Way too many long drawn out, unnecessary details.

This isn't a perfect book but the theme is chilling and the narrative compelling. With the story of domestic abuse and the 'blame the victim' society, there are many parallels to stories in the news today with the 'Me Too' headlines. Though those headlines refer to sexual harassment and this story is about attempted murder, the disbelief of authorities is the same.

I didn't especially like any of the characters - - and I admit I was suspecting absolutely everyone of being in on Ryan's scam - - still, I had sympathy for Cass and especially her children. Cass was SO STUPID late in the book when she put her children at risk. What on earth was she thinking?!

Sometimes the writing was a bit disjointed jumping from one thing to another but the buildup of tension and suspense was good and kept me engrossed in the story. The ending was a bit too 'tied up in a pretty bow' to be realistic but probably the best ending possible.

Poison was not a book I would originally snatch up from a shelf at a bookstore, but something about the synopsis made me think it was going to be more than met the eye. I was pleasantly proven correct. Galt Niederhoffer delivered a book that was suspenseful, terrifying, and mind boggling all at the same time.

Cass is the typical house wife and working mom who seems to have the perfect life. Husband, 3 kids, great house in a nice suburb, good job, and just overall happy. Unfortunately, not everything is as it appears. Cass was living a silent horror that so many go through. Domestic violence masked by the "perfect" family and no one to believe you when you cry for help. The suspense throughout this novel was my favorite. I felt the terror that Cass felt. I felt that maternal instinct you have to protect your children at all cost, even harm to yourself. I commend the ability of Niederhoffer to be able to draw the same emotion from the reader that the characters are feeling.

The only part of this book was some of the sections felt drawn out. It felt like the comparisons to situations or the little tidbits of wisdowm mixed in when explaining Cass' feelings or her reason for doing something were drawn out. Instead of one or two comparison, it was an entire paragraph or two of the same though stated two to three ways. I felt this dragged out sections of the story and made me have to put extra effort in to staying interested while those paragraphs went on. Those were not too frequent, though, so it did not completely dissuade from the story line.

I love a good suspense story and one that I am constantly trying to figure out what is next. Galt Niederhoffer did that with Poison. This book is the perfect mixture of intense and heartbreaking. Definitely not a light, fun read, but a great read that will hold you until the very end.

I usually try to find at least one thing good to say in a review but there is absolutely nothing about this book that I liked. I would not have finished but I felt obligated since it was an ARC.

3.5, rounded up to 4

Cass and Ryan are a married, professional couple with 3 kids and a seemingly happy, normal family life. The big question of this book is, are things always what they seem? Can we take at face value what we see? What if they aren't? Who will believe the unbelievable and who can be trusted, if anyone? What do you do if your very life and those of your kids are at stake?
It was scary at times reading this and imagining myself in Cass' shoes... As the reader you have to decide who & what you believe. It was a page turner for me, and I liked the little clues the author left to help define the characters personalities without being spoon fed. I would recommend to those who enjoy this type of psychological family drama, but with a little warning of some sex scenes I felt added nothing to the storyline.

*Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC to read and honestly review**

Cass Connor's life is perfect with her dynamic husband Ryan, kids and respected job as a professor. Until it isn't. Cass' life spirals out of control after she believes she is poisoned. This book touches on the themes of dismissing women's claims of violence with "she's crazy" and victim blaming. This book had be guessing until the very end.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an ARC of Poison by Galt Niederhoffer. All opinions are my own.

What a Great psychological thriller! After the passing of her husband, who died seven years previously from Hodgkins Lymphoma, she met Ryan. She thought he as the answer to everything or so it seemed. To the public, it seemed as if this family had it all together. Everything was perfect, a husband and three adorable children. They live in Madrona, Washington just outside of Seattle, in a house with a lake view. Cass is a teacher of Journalism at the University of Washington. Ironically, her class is on Destroying the Female Witness. She will use this lesson to help get later on in the plot. Ryan works in an architectural firm. Cass’s family was totally against her living in Seattle, after all it was clear across the country. What could possibly go so wrong? Things start to chip away at their marriage. Ryan forces her to hire a new nanny for the children. And when this new Nanny starts to work for them, strange things start to happen. Ryan is sneaking behind her back and telling lies, and he has pictures of a beautiful athletic woman on his phone. Cass finds all kinds of evidence that Ryan is cheating on her. She doesn’t understand what is happening. Both Cass and Ryan start the descent downhill in their marriage, and he uses every tactic to manipulate things in his favor. Cass thinks things are going to be better, but is it? It all starts with Ryan’s making her a pink frothy smoothie. Then the vomiting and diarrhea starts. What is happening to her? Is Ryan trying to poison her? Will the police believe her, when she reports it? What would he have to gain by doing this? What a roller coaster ride? The plot is totally ingenious and keeps the reader turning the pages. The character development is fantastic. The reader can definitely relate to each character. The ending was great. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I look forward to reading more from this author.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I had a love/hate relationship with this story. The first part of the book didn't grab me at all. However, the suspense ramps up in the middle and you get absorbed into the story. Did not like ending. Cass really confused me. She was just all over the place. I will say there is domestic abuse in this story. It will be difficult to read those scenes for some. Overall not personally my taste, but will have a solid audience.

Darn good creepy thriller. The basic theme- a widow marries a widower who might have murdered his wife- is not original but gosh, Niederhoffer has done a fine job of plotting this. Case thinks she's found her future with Ryan but what about his past? Well, that's where this gets good. There are twists and turns and please pay attention to what seems like extraneous scientific info. You might find yourself talking directly to Cass. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This is a page turner!

The story told in “Poison” is riveting and totally blew my mind. This is very much a psychological thriller that will leave you breathless. Cass and Ryan Connor have what looks like the perfect marriage and family. A nice home in a nice neighborhood, 3 kids around the table, jobs they enjoy: what could possibly be wrong? Cass starts to notice things that just seem a bit off. Ryan takes longer than necessary getting home from the airport and he smells of alcohol. Was he with somebody else? But his explanation makes so much sense. Then Cass starts to feel ill, nausea and vomiting. Ryan seems more short tempered than usual. That fish he brought home just doesn’t taste right. Is there any validity to her suspicions? Why will no one believe her?

This story really gets into Cass’s head, exploring her thoughts and her perceptions in a way I’ve never experienced before in a book. At times I believed Cass was right, but then there were moments when I thought perhaps she was losing her mind. And you really have to go all the way to the end to find out whose story is the truth. But then I was wondering if Cass was going to make it to the end of the story. This is really good stuff! “Poison” is the first book I have read from this author and I am so impressed that I will have to check out more. The story is masterfully written, the characters are beautifully drawn and the ending was very satisfying. I highly recommend this one!

This book had the potential to be really great, but unfortunately it got bogged down by the wordiness, and unrelatable characters. The main character was too gullible to be believable, and I became really frustrated with her inability to make good choices, or even rational ones. The storyline itself was really good.

I didn't care for this book. This depiction of domestic abuse was too fragmented for me to get a real idea of how the situation devolved into abuse. Early in the book, the reader learns how the couple falls in love but within a few pages, it is three years later and the abuse has begun without any real explanation of how the couple reached such a place. There was too much telling an not enough showing. I also could not relate to the wife at all. Her huge swings in reaction to her husband seemed unrealistic. I have read another book of Niedhoffer's, THE TAXONOMY OF BARNACLES, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but POISON just didn't appeal to me.

I will be honest. I almost bailed on this read. It started super slow and mundane. It began with all the rituals of the family. Basically nothing special. However, the beginning actually turned out to be a good set up for this story.

Cass is a single mother of two when she meets Ryan. Of course, they fall in love, get married, have a child. Then, her paranoia, his anger..sends this story OFF THE RAILS!

Cass is not someone I related to very well. She is too trusting and naive. Yet, she is extremely paranoid. Then, Cass really does something so stupid. She enters a cat and mouse game with Ryan. I had to read faster to get her out of her stupidity. I mean…take into consideration your kids’ safety. This was one of my big annoyances. Cass does not remove her kids from this volatile situation. She keeps putting them back in danger time and time again.

Ryan is one crazy dude. He has many triggers and he is a good actor. The author did a great job keeping the reader guessing. Is Cass really overly paranoid and crazy. Is she accusing Ryan when he did nothing wrong. Or is Ryan really trying to kill her. This is a book you need to read to find out.

Very creepy and almost too realistic.

DNF at 20%. There are too many great books out there for me to waste time on books like Poison. It felt like I was reading a basic outline of a piece of fiction rather than a completed novel. I skimmed through a lot of this 20% that I did read because the writing style is excessive yet basic. For example, when describing the wife it was something along the lines of saying she's a former single mother of two, now baby makes three, and new husband makes a family of five. She works from home, requiring a babysitter so she can work while at home, working on the household chores while working, baby screaming while she's on the phone, covering the phone with her hand to block out the screams, yet keeping a professional tone despite the maternal desire to soothe the baby.

I wish I could say that was an extreme example, however, I do not think it was that far of a stretch. It was excessively wordy yet not really revealing anything. The new husband is also excessive. He is over the top in the examples of how seemingly perfect he is supposed to be that I already did not trust him within the first few pages. It is clear that he is a bad guy, but what is not clear yet is why and how. I am sure that is further discussed in the book but, quite frankly, I just don't care.

Another “perfect” family on the outside story. Ryan and Cass seem to be the perfect family. Cass has two children from her late first husband. Then she marries Ryan and they have a child together. All seems perfect on the outside but little signs convinces Cass that her husband is having an affair. When she confronts him he becomes the epitome of the abusive husband – denial, anger, blame shifting, threats.

The writing style put me off a bit. The first couple of chapters I immediately envisioned the beginning of a Twilight Zone episode with a narrator looking on the family and setting the stage for us. But as I warmed up to it I found myself inpatient with the daily routines that pulled me away from the book.

Ryan becomes physically abusive – wrapping his fingers around her neck until she thinks she will die, forcefully raping her. Then one day he sneers to her that he is going to kill her. Soon Cass begins having violent stomach cramps and she feels as though her body is short-circuiting. She comes to the conclusion that her husband is poisoning her. She tries to get help but has no proof of any crime being committed. Now it becomes a game of cat-and-mouse. Who can Cass trust? Are her children safe? What would happen next?

It was difficult reading of Cass’ response to Ryan’s cheating and abuse. At first she let herself believe his lies. She always took him back when he turned on the charm. She had been an investigative reporter and was now a college professor. I expected her to not fall for his tricks. But accepting how you could be so wrong about someone is hard to accept. Only when she realized that her children were in danger did she put aside her emotions and once again became the investigative reporter.

Her story is one that many women have faced. The victim becomes the guilty one. What did she do to provoke him? Was she seeking revenge for his betrayal?

It was a good thing the story was very good, as the writing definitely could have been better. Also some aspects of the story just did not seem realistic – they were too forced. But I do feel it was the time reading it for entertainment value.

Also posted on Books-a-Million, Edelweiss and Litsy.

We've been down this road before (where the perfect marriage becomes a living nightmare), but Poison travels in a slightly different direction than some of its predecessors. While Poison does have some similarities to novels like Gone Girl and Girl on the Train (is the wife crazy or is her husband just trying to make her think she is?), here we learn the method and motive fairly quickly. It's rare when a character comes out and says "I'm going to kill you and here's how I'm gonna do it." Cass is a young widow with two small children when she meets Ryan. Ryan seems like the perfect man for her, and he adores her children as well. When Ryan and Cass marry and she gives birth to their son Cass sees only a bright and beautiful future for her family. The move from New York to Seattle cements their new life. But things sour quickly. Ryan has a short temper and his verbal abuse soon turns physical. Like many abused women, Cass blames herself. When Ryan tells her his intentions Cass thinks it's just his temper talking. Then Cass develops a series of mysterious symptoms that make her wonder if Ryan might be right when he tells her she is losing her mind. What follows is a marital game of "Survivor-Pacific Northwest Edition" and who gets "kicked off the island" is anyone's guess. The story is a little long, while the ending wraps up much too neatly. There's more answers than questions in Poison, but it's a cautionary tale with a message: always trust your gut (literally).

“Poison” by Gait Niederhoffer is a modern thriller with an unusual difference. The typical twists and turns are replaced with issues that are truly frightening and potentially deadly. The Connor family seems perfect in every way, happy wife, perfect husband, beautiful children. Readers follow them through their wonderful life in a new city, with a new home, and a new baby, but all is not right in the Conner household. . What can be wrong? Well, everything or nothing, and how do we tell?
Niederhoffer intertwines the idyllic life of the Conner family as they go about their happy lives with the terrifying story of Cass who is sure she is being poisoned. Either life for Cass is becoming terrifying and dangerous every day, or she is slipping into deep mental illness. Cass reaches out to professionals for help, but they merely accuse her, the victim, with inventing the allegations. She suffers shame and blame while readers attempt to separate the frightening truth from the delusions.
I received a copy of “Poison” from Gait Niederhoffer, St. Martin’s Pres, and NetGalley. It was a compelling story filled with deception, fear, manipulation and outright lies. Once you start this book, you will not know whom to trust until the end.

This one ended up being a DNF for me. Too many things just didn't add up and the story was packed with filler.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

How do I count the ways I found this book irritating? I dislike reviews that give away major plot points, so if you have your heart set on reading this, stop reading my review now.

If you're still here, let's start with a simple summation: Cass was once a widow with two children and a major career as an investigative journalist who wrote a piece on the practice of "baked-in" misogyny in crimes against women, the healthcare industry and the court system.

She gave it all up to marry the gorgeous man of her dreams, have his baby, give her children a new daddy, and a full-time career as a lowly college professor. Then, suddenly, the wheels start to come off the bus when she begins to suspect her beloved husband is poisoning her. But. . .no one believes her.

Okay. Still here? Let's make a list of my grievances, shall we?

1. The book is told from a strange narration standpoint. In the beginning, it felt like an amalgam of some kind of nature program, (The female, content with the success of her reproductive abilities settles in to nurture and rear her offspring), blended with those films they used to show in school home ec classes, (the wife, content with her role as maid, cook, and chauffeur, rushes to greet her husband and children. She loves them and they adore her. How does she do it?). The point is, the whole book is from some outsider's observation. That is, until it slides into some weird kaleidoscopic psychedelic offshoot and pretty much stops making sense to anyone living in the real world, at least as I know it.

I cannot tell you how many times the laundry whirled, the dishwasher hummed and something delicious simmered on the stove. All the machines work, until they don't. It's a metaphor, see? With a sledge hammer.

2. Cass is supposed to be highly intelligent, but she's become this horrible MarySue who kowtows to this man, even after she has proof of his infidelity, the fact that he's repeatedly stated she is "going to exit his life", and he is actively poisoning her.

3. Marley. The planted baby sitter. The one with leukemia. One of the hubby's gf's. This book is, I assume, supposed to be in current time. Cass is stated to be 40. Marley is a "young woman, about 25." Except Marley talks about how she got leukemia and her sister got skin cancer when Marley was 12. In 1984. So, she was born in 1972? That puts her at 45.

4. The creepy weird neighbor guy. He has a toddler. He claims to have been an acolyte with Timothy Leary in his youth. Again, the math does not compute. Timothy Leary died in 1996. If this guy was around 40 now, that means he was about 20ish at the time of Leary's death and so probably not an acolyte during Leary's "turn on, tune in" LSD days. But the creepy neighbor guy knows all about LSD and Monsanto and selling drugs to the neighbors while taking his toddler to the park.

5. So, Cass is being poisoned. Nobody believes her. She's puking her guts up, hallucinating, hair's falling out in clumps, and (this is my favorite part) hemorrhaging from her vaginal and rectal orifices. She's wearing an improvised diaper. She goes to the doctor. That asshole tells her that if the bleeding continues, please make another appointment and he will consider sending her for a colonoscopy. She should try to calm her nerves. I've had some stomach issues. Every doctor I've ever seen immediately wants to do a colonoscopy. I sure as hell wasn't hemorrhaging out my ass into an improvised diaper! They tend to take continual vomiting and hair loss fairly seriously, too.

6. Then there's the misogynistic legal system. Literally. They want to throw poor Cass into the loony bin and take away her kids. Even Cass's mother doesn't believe her.

This is a fairly short book and it should have read quickly. Instead, it devolved into an overbearing feminist call to arms. I kept thinking there would be some big plot twist or reveal at the end. But, no. The ending was suddenly there. The sun will come up tomorrow and Cass will be there, fighting the big bad man-system on behalf of women everywhere, her cape fluttering in the breeze. But first, she must pick up her children from her mother, so she can say, "I told you so."

I kid you not. This was bad. It gets 2 stars because 1 stars are reserved for DNF's. I slogged all the way to the end, and this is my fair and honest review.

This story of a woman married to her second husband after her first has died takes a long time to get going. Almost the entire first fifth of the novel is the author telling us the backstory of Cass and Ryan. Cass has a ten-year-old and a seven-year-old from her first marriage. Sam is the two-year-old she had with Ryan.
Once the story actually starts, the pace picks up dramatically. Cass suspects that Ryan is cheating on her. Then she suspects that he’s poisoning her, but poison is a tricky thing to prove. Did it occur naturally or accidentally in the food she ate? If not, how does she or the police know the exact source? Ryan? The babysitter?
Cass begins to doubt everyone. No one believes her—not the ER folks or the cops and definitely not Ryan, who repeatedly tells her and anyone else who will listen that she’s mentally ill. Even as a reader I wasn’t sure if she was delusional, if only a little.
It actually got to the point that reading the novel stressed me out. Niederhoffer does a good job of talking about how women’s testimony on rape and abuse is not considered as reliable as testimony from men.