The story of The Heroines can be summed up in one quote from Jennifer Saint's novel, Ariadne: "What I did not know was that I had hit upon a truth of womanhood: however blameless a life we led; the passions and the greed of men could bring us to ruin, and there was nothing we could do."

The Heroines is a heartbreaking tale of a young woman's fall from grace due to the actions of others. Phaedra is dealt a bad hand, taken advantage of by others and ultimately pays the price for this. This novel deals with incredibly deep themes such as death, grief, SA - but is written in an incredibly juvenile manner that detracted from the novel in my opinion. However, I do understand that the main character is a teen girl and therefore the juvenile writing could be an attempt to portray the character's youth. However, it mostly came across as sub-par writing. The feelings of the characters were only superficially explored and left me feeling as if I was missing a lot of depth.

I have never read the actual Greek myth of Phaedra or of Theseus and therefore make no claims to the accuracy of the book. As far as I am concerned this is a retelling of an old myth, intertwined with the morality, judgement and views we imbue it with as modern people.