The Washington Post – Maureen Corrigan

In its intensity and overwhelming sense of loss, the voice-over that opens Erin Kelly's terrific first suspense novel…is most directly reminiscent of the unnamed narrator of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca…Karen Clarke, like du Maurier's heroine, is a nice person who has had terrible things happen to her because of a Bad Girl who wouldn't play fair and insisted on scooping up all the men and attention. But just as Rebecca has enthralled generations of female readers with its story of a mousy maiden's triumph over her glamorous beyond-the-grave rival, The Poison Tree also offers the twisted pleasures of vengeance within its eerie narrative.