I wanted to like this one a lot more than I did. I'm the first person to love a feminist myth retelling. The point of view shifting so frequently hindered the book in my opinion. It made it hard for me to feel truly connected to any of the characters. Don't get me wrong. I love a Greek tragedy, which this certainly is and I knew that going in. But the tone of this book was very dark, so definitely be warned that the subject matter is heavy. I preferred the book Ariadne by Jennifer Saint and Ariadne Unraveled by Zenobia Neil. Both of those were 5 star reads for me.

Mixed bag of a book… Really felt clunky with the writing style and direction of the story in the first 1/2 of the book. Felt like a chore to read. It does pick up steam and the writing becomes more cohesive and fluid as the story grows darker. At one point it was uncomfortable to read with every other word being “rape” and men belittling her.. Truly did not realize the extent of this being a contemporary tragedy, but man it holds up with some of the classics 😅 

This book could have been great. The origin myths chosen are very conducive to interpretation and the author had some interesting ideas about where Phaedra’s story might’ve gone. It is really the writing that fails here. There are far too many POVs, especially from characters who show up once and disappear, or are not crucial to the plot. As if this wasn’t confusing enough, the writing itself is clunky and disorganized. There is a lot of tense confusion and it makes for a sometimes hard-to-follow read. 

Interesting take on pheadras story, easy and interesting read

I really wanted to like this book. I have been on a Greek mythology retelling reading kick and I thought this book would be the perfect fit. It was not. Knowing the myth does not make this book any easier to read, in fact it only makes you want to scream when events play out exactly as you knew they would but now, NOW you can see the actual (imagined) impact they had on women in the story which only made me angrier. Every single character is unlikable. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Not a single redeeming quality to be found in any male character and not a single likeable character trait in any female character. One of the things that irked me the most about this book was that they CONSTANTLY reminded you how plain Phaedra was. Anytime a new character interacted with her: "Oh that is too bad she is so plain." "Well, she isn't a great beauty" and so on and so forth. That was the only way to describe her. I completely understand the constant reminders that she is a child, because she is, but the constant reminder of how ugly she is compared to other women was so off putting. For a proclaimed "feminist novel", I expected a lot better than what was given. Also, can we talk about how every Greek mythology retelling book is compared to Madeline Miller (just like this book was)? This book's writing was scores below Madeline Miller and just plain boring at times. The Night Chorus was interesting, and I might have enjoyed it if I listened to the audiobook. In writing, it looks super disjointed and is confusing a lot of times.

The only redeeming aspect of the book was getting to see Phaedra take revenge on her rapist because let's be honest, any person who has been raped wishes they could deal out justice to the person who harmed them in the same fashion. Knowing that she was like 6-7 months pregnant when she did it makes it that much more of an accomplishment. That was the only high point of the book. Her death at her own hands doesn't even feel like her own choice at the end due to her being backed into that corner.