The Prison Healer Book Review

From Goodreads:

Seventeen-year-old Kiva Meridan has spent the last ten years fighting for survival in the notorious death prison, Zalindov, working as the prison healer.
When the Rebel Queen is captured, Kiva is charged with keeping the terminally ill woman alive long enough for her to undergo the Trial by Ordeal: a series of elemental challenges against the torments of air, fire, water, and earth, assigned to only the most dangerous of criminals.
Then a coded message from Kiva’s family arrives, containing a single order: “Don’t let her die. We are coming.” Aware that the Trials will kill the sickly queen, Kiva risks her own life to volunteer in her place. If she succeeds, both she and the queen will be granted their freedom.
But no one has ever survived.
With an incurable plague sweeping Zalindov, a mysterious new inmate fighting for Kiva’s heart, and a prison rebellion brewing, Kiva can’t escape the terrible feeling that her trials have only just begun.

CW: Rape, sexual abuse, torture, self-harm, drug addiction. There are possibly a few other triggers that I haven’t remembered, so please be aware going into this that this book discusses a lot of dark topics.

Please note that this review also discusses some of these issues as part of my review of the novel.

Hi everyone,

I don’t think this has ever happened before, where I’ve enjoyed a book so much until the very end, in fact the VERY LAST PAGE. I am going to keep this spoiler free, as The Prison Healer is a relatively new release and there’s quite a bit of hype around it, so I feel like a lot of people will be excited to pick it up.

I’ll be honest and say that I actually had to set this one aside and think about it for a few days before I wrote this review, if only because I wasn’t sure how I felt about that HUGE twist at the end, and about a few other issues to do with the romance throughout the story. It’s possible that I’m just nitpicking at a few of these things, and I’m reading too much into things, but I will say there were a couple of iffy moments throughout this book that touched upon problematic to me, which we’ll discuss in a bit more detail further on.

Let’s start with the characters. I thought Kiva was an interesting protagonist and it seemed as though she had a strong sense of ethics. She’s the prison healer and for the most part she tries her best to not judge the people she’s treating, since she understands how easy it is for innocent people to be caught up in the prison system in this world. This means that she heals people even if she thinks they’re horrible, but there are moments where we see her not exactly breaking these rules, but certainly making things a little bit more uncomfortable for the people she doesn’t like. I think that’s actually an interesting part of her personality, and it doesn’t massively go against her ethics. It was a good way to make it so she doesn’t seem too angelic and self-sacrificing, which is a trait that a lot of female characters unfortunately have in things like fairy-tales, and so it’s become one of those traits that YA books often try to avoid.

I think the characters in this book were really great. I loved Tipp and his sibling-type relationship with Kiva. I think this is what really sold me on this book from the get-go. Kiva keeps talking about how caring about people in the prison is a bad idea, because the death rate is so high and people have come and gone a lot. But despite her attempts to keep her walls up, Tipp is this cute little kid who somehow gets past her defences and she does everything she can to keep him safe, because I think he represents a sort of innocence and hope for Kiva. I really liked that he was part of this, because I think that cranked up a lot of the tension very early on and kept me on the edge of my seat. I could tell this was going to be one of those quite dark YA books that didn’t mind killing off some important characters either, and since Tipp was so young and defenceless, I was so so scared for him throughout this entire book. Naari was probably my favourite character, because it seemed like she had such an interesting role—she’s a female guard in a prison where the guards often mistreat the prisoners, especially women, and it was nice to see her stand up and do her best to protect people who were vulnerable—although again I think the author is careful not to slip into that awkward thing where a character is too angelic and perfect, and so she does a great job at showing the tensions of Naari’s role by occasionally making her helpless to defend the people who she’s meant to be looking after. There was a lot of inner conflict stuff going on with her character, which made her really interesting. Jarren was also a pretty good character- I liked seeing how he managed to make Kiva come out of her shell, how he was careful and patient with her, and for the most part I liked the romance that was blossoming between him and Kiva—I thought it was angsty and tense, but also quite sweet.

Except for a few moments, which, on reflection, made me revise my opinion of the book a little bit. When I considered what rating I would give this book after the twist ending, I thought it would still be a four star read, at least. But then the more I thought about some of the elements of the relationship, the more I considered if I would even give the book four stars. Okay, so this is the bit where I talk about some of the more triggering aspects of the novel, so if you’re not ready to read this, feel free to skip away here.

Okay, so onto the more uncomfortable scenes. So the first one for me occurs just after the main character has witnessed someone being raped and drugged by guards. Kiva is taunted by the guards and threatened to keep quiet about what she’s seen. The guards tell her that if she says anything, she will be the next girl they go after. It’s a horrible, awful scene, and it’s really distressing to read, but it makes sense within the confines of the narrative because the book is trying to show how awful the conditions in the prison are, and how the power dynamics allow the guards to exploit girls. Unlike some books and tv shows, it feels like it serves some purpose beyond shock value, so it kinda makes sense that it’s there, even if it is uncomfortable to read. This is not the scene I have issues with. However, immediately after this happens, Kiva goes to her cell to try and sleep and Jarron comes in. He’s been told by a sympathetic guard what almost happened to Kiva. So how does he respond to her trauma? By basically sneaking up behind her and climbing into her bed without asking if she is okay with it. I’m glad that his presence and his physical contact helps Kiva to deal with what she’s seen, but I find it a bit odd that there’s no initial consent here, and that the book seems completely fine with this, and never stops to wonder how Kiva might have reacted to someone sneaking into her bed right after witnessing what she does. The whole party scene thing is also never mentioned much after this, and is barely acknowledged, because apparently Kiva decides to stop worrying about it and then apparently just…does? I’m not really sure how I feel about this. On one hand, some people who have witnessed something traumatic do lock away their thoughts and try to repress them, but this doesn’t feel entirely like that. It feels more like the whole thing is brushed under the carpet and ignored for the rest of the book.

The other scene I have an issue with is another romantic scene between Kiva and Jarron, in which Kiva admits that she used to self-harm to cope with her guilt over marking people with the prison symbol when they first get to the building. She shows Jarron the scars and then they have a whole moment when they almost kiss (if I remember rightly). Which again, just feels icky and feels as though it’s almost romanticising self-harm because he talks about how wonderful she is, and she thinks he’s so understanding and kind because he doesn’t get upset at seeing her scars, and there’s a lot of chemistry in the scene. I just wish that this didn’t happen in the way that it does, because as someone with mental health issues, it feels as though it’s sort of romanticising self-harm.

Now onto less serious issues, particularly the plot twist at the end. Admittedly, I didn’t see it coming, so it was interesting to read. But, it also didn’t feel entirely natural to me. The whole book is in third person from Kiva’s perspective, although it does seem like the book spends a lot of time in her head, and has a lot of focus on her thoughts and emotions. The plot twist at the end doesn’t work because of this. It feels like there’s not enough breadcrumbs throughout the book to foreshadow it, and because the book so closely follows Kiva in this way, there are definitely moments where she actively lies to herself in her own thoughts. I don’t mind an unreliable narrator, and I guess some of it could be explained by the fact that she’s been in prison for a good portion of her life, but it still seemed completely weird to me. I will admit that I’m still curious enough to buy and read the next book because I want to see if the series does anything with this twist, or if it’s just going to make a complete about turn without justifying it, but I guess we’ll see how that unfolds.

Overall, I’m giving The Prison Healer:

For the most part, I really enjoyed it, even though I wish it had come with content warnings because the book is really dark and touches on a lot of subjects that may be difficult for readers. I did think there were moments when the book verged on problematic with the romance, although it’s certainly not the most offensive thing I’ve ever read and I was able to keep reading it, but again I wish the author had considered how the scenarios might have made romantic moments inappropriate. I also don’t know how I feel about the ending, because it was such a surprise and it’ll take reading the next book to see if it was a brilliant twist, or a terrible one.

Has anyone read this book already, or is planning to? What did you think of it? Let me know by leaving a comment in the discussion section down below <3