Astrid Hawk
Read as a First Reads July 2026 pick. Based on the cover and the synopsis, I thought this would have similar tone and aesthetics to Madeline Miller's works - I really enjoyed Circe despite the fact that I've never been able to summon an interest in Greek mythology. Unfortunately, this book compares unfavorably to Miller's work.
I was initially drawn in by the first couple of chapters, where we meet Del (short for Asphodel) in the midst of brewing up a magical concoction to use at a summer festival of the gods in the underworld that evening. She's living alone on her island of trees and flowers, and the initial descriptions are lush, succulent, and colorful. Unfortunately, this tone does not persist through the book once Del starts interacting with other mythological figures, whereupon the atmospheric setting is dropped in favor of describing family Drama (capital D intended) with teenage dialog. Every character behaves in a juvenile manner, and while I realize some of this is true to Greek mythology in general - gods were always capricious, impulsive, shallow, and vindictive - the moralizing that the author tries to do through Del and all this Drama feels heavy-handed, as if trying to explain things to a child. (And this may be a nit, but every time Del has an angry response to something, she has "rage-red flowers blooming in her throat", which is such an overt, recognizable metaphor that it can really only be used once... but the author uses it at least 6 times throughout the book, making it seem like she very quickly ran out of ways to describe the feeling of anger.)
I struggled (and failed) to care about any of the characters. The lies they told and past actions they tried to hide seemed increasingly more "much ado about nothing" - everyone was harboring unmitigated resentment for something done to them in the past, and it was up to Del to discover the lies and fix the problems. Just a very teenage-girl-with-diary kind of style to me, and I couldn't care about the other gods at all. Pretty much everyone was the same character, behaving petulantly and vindictively and then finding ways to justify it. Even when Del finally embarks on a Fates-given "quest" over halfway through the book, when I thought we'd get into some interesting plotting and puzzle-solving, it's just more family Drama - Del solves all the puzzles in fits of revelation, and the actual resolution comes down in all cases to a lot of yelling and threatening and tears and confessions and more threatening.
Perhaps worst of all, about halfway through, we're "treated" to some very abrupt and very explicit sex scenes. I guess the good thing is that they're all smushed together in the same spot, so they're easily skippable. I don't have an problem with smut in principle, but it really didn't fit with this book at all, and felt cringey in the abrupt and blunt language used to describe them.
I'm fighting the feeling that I need to apologize for this rating after reading the author's notes at the back - it's clear she considered this a labor of love and that storytelling has been her passion since she was a child. Sadly this felt like it was actually cobbled together from a 9 or 10-year-old mythology lover's perspective, with some smut thrown in to appeal to adults.
Read as a First Reads July 2026 pick. Based on the cover and the synopsis, I thought this would have similar tone and aesthetics to Madeline Miller's works - I really enjoyed Circe despite the fact that I've never been able to summon an interest in Greek mythology. Unfortunately, this book compares unfavorably to Miller's work.
I was initially drawn in by the first couple of chapters, where we meet Del (short for Asphodel) in the midst of brewing up a magical concoction to use at a summer festival of the gods in the underworld that evening. She's living alone on her island of trees and flowers, and the initial descriptions are lush, succulent, and colorful. Unfortunately, this tone does not persist through the book once Del starts interacting with other mythological figures, whereupon the atmospheric setting is dropped in favor of describing family Drama (capital D intended) with teenage dialog. Every character behaves in a juvenile manner, and while I realize some of this is true to Greek mythology in general - gods were always capricious, impulsive, shallow, and vindictive - the moralizing that the author tries to do through Del and all this Drama feels heavy-handed, as if trying to explain things to a child. (And this may be a nit, but every time Del has an angry response to something, she has "rage-red flowers blooming in her throat", which is such an overt, recognizable metaphor that it can really only be used once... but the author uses it at least 6 times throughout the book, making it seem like she very quickly ran out of ways to describe the feeling of anger.)
I struggled (and failed) to care about any of the characters. The lies they told and past actions they tried to hide seemed increasingly more "much ado about nothing" - everyone was harboring unmitigated resentment for something done to them in the past, and it was up to Del to discover the lies and fix the problems. Just a very teenage-girl-with-diary kind of style to me, and I couldn't care about the other gods at all. Pretty much everyone was the same character, behaving petulantly and vindictively and then finding ways to justify it. Even when Del finally embarks on a Fates-given "quest" over halfway through the book, when I thought we'd get into some interesting plotting and puzzle-solving, it's just more family Drama - Del solves all the puzzles in fits of revelation, and the actual resolution comes down in all cases to a lot of yelling and threatening and tears and confessions and more threatening.
Perhaps worst of all, about halfway through, we're "treated" to some very abrupt and very explicit sex scenes. I guess the good thing is that they're all smushed together in the same spot, so they're easily skippable. I don't have an problem with smut in principle, but it really didn't fit with this book at all, and felt cringey in the abrupt and blunt language used to describe them.
I'm fighting the feeling that I need to apologize for this rating after reading the author's notes at the back - it's clear she considered this a labor of love and that storytelling has been her passion since she was a child. Sadly this felt like it was actually cobbled together from a 9 or 10-year-old mythology lover's perspective, with some smut thrown in to appeal to adults.