Is I Will Become the Villain's Poison Taster Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Manhwa (shōjo), 109 chapters
Run	2023–present · ongoing
Community score	AniList 7.0 · MangaUpdates 7.5
Content	Fantasy violence, poison/imprisonment themes
Where to read	WEBTOON — official

Overview

An office worker dies in an accident and wakes up in the body of Giselle Rozevin, the doomed side villain of a novel called The Poisoned Apple, a character whose entire narrative purpose was to be executed by poison in prison. There's just one problem for whoever's trying to kill her: poison doesn't work on her, and she can also taste-identify what poison she's being fed. With the story's heroes having no use for her anymore, Giselle takes the one leverage she has and offers her rare skill to the villains instead, aligning herself with Reniel, a mysterious black mage who becomes both her employer and, gradually, something more.

What it does well

The poison-taster gimmick is what makes this stand out from the crowded villainess-adjacent shelf. It's not just a cute power, it's the entire reason Giselle has any agency at all, and the story is smart about using it to justify why the villains would want her around and why she'd choose them over the heroes who discarded her. That gives the whole "villains aren't so villainous, heroes aren't so heroic" inversion real mechanical weight instead of just being a mood.

Giselle herself is a strong lead specifically because she acts rather than reacts. She reads the situation, calculates her value, and makes a deliberate choice to throw in with the villains, which is a refreshing change from reincarnation heroines who mostly wait for the plot to happen to them. Reniel, the male lead, gets a similar upgrade on genre convention: he's teasing and clearly protective without collapsing into the stoic, emotionally unavailable archetype that so many of these romances lean on. And the full-color art does real work here, expressive enough to sell the quieter, more intimate beats between the leads, not just the fantasy set dressing.

Where it falls short

The opening arc is slower to get going than it needs to be. The early antagonists read as fairly flat before the story gives them more shading, and it takes a stretch of chapters before the Giselle-Reniel dynamic that's clearly the main draw gets real room to breathe. The heroes-vs-villains role reversal is a fun premise, but the story hasn't yet pushed it as far as it could, there's more room to complicate what hero and villain actually mean here than what's been used so far. And if you're looking for fast plot momentum, the slow-burn romance pacing will test your patience more than it rewards it early on.

Verdict

This is a villainess-adjacent romance that earns its hook instead of just borrowing the genre's trappings. Giselle's proactive streak and the poison-immunity gimmick give it real texture, and the central romance is patient in a way that pays off rather than stalls. If you can get through a slower opening arc, it's a satisfying read for fans of the genre who want a female lead who actually drives the plot.