Beautiful Venom

Beautiful Venom uses Dahlia Thorne’s and Kane Davenport’s parallel healing journeys to deepen their relationship, and their individual encounters with loss, abuse, and suffering draw them together over the course of the novel. The romantic counterparts discover an unexpected point of connection when they begin opening up to each other about their pasts. Over time, their individual attempts to transcend their pain are supported by their developing relationship, illustrating the novel’s emphasis on the importance of human connection to growth and healing after trauma.

For Dahlia, healing from her trauma means forgiving herself for her parents’ deaths in a car accident when she was six years old. Since this tragic incident, Dahlia has blamed herself, convinced that when she showed her parents her doll while driving, she distracted them and directly caused their deaths. She experienced subsequent abuse at the hands of her foster parents, adding to her childhood trauma, but Dahlia’s biggest emotional weight is her guilt over her mother and father’s passing. She eventually opens up to Kane about this aspect of her life, admitting, “It wasn’t until Violet came along and told me the accident wasn’t my fault and that blaming myself and spiraling wouldn’t make my parents happy in the least that I realized I was wrong” (285).