Lore follows its titular character Melora as she is dragged back into a borderline magical world that she has spent her young adult life trying to escape. The story mostly follows her and a small group of friends as they try to figure out why people in that world are looking for Melora and eventually doing everything they can to save New York City from a threatening force. The story includes flashbacks to formative moments in her childhood when she was still involved in this world and training to be a god hunter.

There are several surprises and twists woven into the story and the modernization of and constant references to Greek Mythology is fun. Bracken artfully brings various ancient myths up in a way that always gives the reader a chance to figure out if they know the story before she gives the sparks notes version for anyone who can't quite remember the details. Characters are all strong-willed people who have values that they adhere to rigidly, which means that there isn't much in the way of character-building, but the plot moves quickly under the choices made by our leading characters.

I did find my interest in the story flagging toward the end of of the book. This could just be a result of me trying to finish the entire thing too quickly and it was just too much all at once, but the story leaps from one brutal killing or assault or attack to another and that gets exhausting.

Being who I am, I don't love that all of the main characters are shipped, but I wasn't surprised that Bracken made those choices.

I think I was also hoping for a book that was  more empowering - I don't find stories that are constantly fighting misogynistic structures and people to be that empowering because they lean so hard on the existence of misogyny on the first place.

I listened to the audio book, which I'm not sure if I would recommend. I liked the narrator, but I had trouble keeping track of all the different houses and weapons and whatnot.

I loved almost everything about this book. It was such an easy read and the adventure was only a week long. The pace was to my utmost taste as well. Some holes were answered just as quick as I question if there will ever be an answer for them, while some were not i.e., I still am quite unsure why and how the Agon really started for it feels like the book greatly lacked an explanation for it—I wanted to know more, I wanted a more in-depth knowledge about the root cause of the Agon, as well as information about the gods and goddesses present in the story.

There were so much opportunities to create a deeper world on each characters—particularly Castor. I loved him ever since I first met his character, therefore, my expectations were high on the explanation of how he became a

god when he was once a sick boy who's on the verge of dying and then all things happened, he suddenly became the false Apollo

. I waited for a long time to know the explanation behind what really happened, yet I was only given a fraction of what I had expected.

Nevertheless, I loved how diverse the characters were, especially having an LGBTQIA+ couple. I also had few gasps as I read the plot twist and  honestly, nothing could have made me ready from it. 

Overall, it was good primarily because it's my cup of tea—gods and goddesses, female heroine, gays and all. I'm in for these tags haha.