Series Review: Belladonna

Wilbur and the book stack of the Belladonna series (photo by Kate Ota 2025)

The Belladonna trilogy by Adalyn Grace includes Belladonna (2022), Foxglove (2023), and Wisteria (2024). There is a forthcoming holiday novella titled Holly due in 2025. The series is upper YA (dare I suggest new adult) secondary world romantasy. The technology era is something like early Victorian maybe, it's hard to pinpoint, but it's pre-electricity and pre-car, but felt post industrial revolution. 

In this series, Signa is an orphaned heiress, who has a strange ability. She can elude death, and see him, but only when she's on the brink of it herself. She can also see ghosts. She's been unlucky with caregivers, who often died, but at nineteen, she's sent to live with more distant relatives, the Hawthorns. The daughter around Signa's age, Blythe, is struggling with a mysterious illness. The son is trying to wrangle the family gentleman's club from their father, their father excessively parties to numb the recent loss of his wife. Signa is determined to solve Blythe's illness with the help of her nemesis (Death) and the family's stable manager. And let's not forget this is a romantasy!

In subsequent books we see other eternal figures like Fate, who becomes a major player in Foxglove and Wisteria, the latter of which is from a different POV than Signa (but I won't spoil who). There is another romance in that book, while Belladonna and Foxglove focus on Signa's romance. 

I adored Signa's romance. Her chemistry with both Death and the stable manager were incredibly written. I tend to be skeptical of enemies to lovers recently, but this one was different and very well done. I was rabid for book 2 by the end of book 1. And the covers and art! To die for. Major shout out to my bestie, a librarian by trade, who sent me this book for Christmas. She nailed it.

You'll enjoy this series if you enjoy enemies to lovers, Death as a character, gothic mysteries, and low-to-medium spice. This series is not for you if you're looking for high spice, if you don't enjoy Death as a character, and if you want to focus more on world building and magic systems in your fantasy.