In a long line of Greek myth retellings, I was super excited to get the chance to read this sapphic retelling of Eros and Psyche that stars a nonbinary Eros. Unfortunately, as you can probably tell from my 3 star rating, it just didn’t fully work for me.

A lot of the writing is very flowery with a lot of similarities to poetry, which can be beautiful but I feel like at times it distracts from the story itself. Conversations would happen between characters, and the thoughts of either Psyche or Eros would sometimes be overshadowed by how it was written. There were a few points I got distracted reading that I missed what was actually going on, and had to re-read closer to clarify.

Also - and this might just be because I’m aroace - but I never fully believed in the relationship between Psyche and Eros. I understand that Eros is the goddess of desire within this novel, but when almost every conversation between the two is them having sex and not much more, I have doubts that their feelings are anything deeper than sexual attraction. Which isn’t wrong, but we would have scenes where Psyche would try to talk to Eros about something she wanted to know, or have clarification on, and then Eros would immediately attempt to distract her with sex (which usually worked) and then we’d rinse and repeat. But then suddenly both are acting like they’re the loves of each other's lives, and I’m just thinking that it’s been 100 years since Eros has had a lover, and this is the first relationship Psyche has ever had - so I just…don’t believe them.

I had a brief idea of the story of Psyche and Eros, but even still I don’t think I was prepared for how….boring?...the middle part of this book actually was. When Psyche is at the palace spending her days alone, only able to spend time with Eros at night in the dark - in all honesty not much at all goes on during this section. And yet, this is the longest section in the book! We spend days (and days, and days…) with Psyche as she learns how to live with this freedom at the palace, and yet also chafes at the rules inflicted on her by her lover. In contrast, the section where Psyche has to complete the three trials is so extremely glossed over that we barely see them happen on the page. And even the ones we do are resolved in only a few rushed pages, without hardly any conflict in them.

I thought the relationship between Psyche and her sisters to be a bit odd, as well. I understand their jealousy at her being so desired by so many suitors - but I’d think once it became clear that she was never going to be married, but only desired, they’d have understood her position better. During the beginning of the book, while Psyche’s older sisters are closer to each other than to her, they still seem to want to protect her from understanding too soon what being a woman is like in their world. But then suddenly once Psyche is forced to understand this very thing, they resent her for it?

I simply don’t understand why after the first time Psyche had her sisters visit, and the hostilities shown to her, that she even agreed for Eros to bring them around once again. Why not attempt to see her mother, instead? It also didn’t make sense for Psyche to suddenly listen to what her sisters were telling her to turn her against Eros, when their attempt to make her marriage as miserable as theirs was so blatant even Psyche herself notices it.

Also, much of this story, both from Psyche and Eros’ point of view, reads like we are listening to them retell this story to us, the audience. Not that this fourth-wall breaking is bad, per se, but the ending made it blatantly obvious with the over-the-top hopeful monologue by Psyche that I just internally rolled my eyes the entire time I read it. It was unnecessary and preachy, to be completely honest.

Finally, the ending didn’t seem to make much sense to me and felt rushed. Eros devises this entire plan to hide her and Psyche’s relationship from Eros’ mother, but then the minute Aphrodite finds out and (eventually) calms down, all is well? Why is Psyche allowed to become immortal in this story simply because Eros wants to be with her? Why would Zeus even share his cup of immortality with either of them, considering he’s been an antagonist the entire time up until this point?

It also kind of bothered me that every single woman in this book, other than Psyche, is a victim trapped by circumstance. Everyone - including the goddesses themselves. It just felt a little disingenuous that every other woman in this novel, starting with Psyche’s mother and including the goddess Persephone, is a victim of the men around them and without any kind of power to do anything to help their station. I’m not denying that women didn’t have autonomy - but to do this in the book and then make almost every woman Psyche interact with an antagonist and be bitter about her circumstances put a bad taste in my mouth. I think at least one platonic female relationship within this novel would have been nice, but as it is the only woman Psyche had any connection to was her own mother, who she never even attempts to see at all during the events of this book.

I do think if you like Greek myth retellings that this is a good book to pick up and explore for yourself to see what you think. I think perhaps, for me, the plot was stretched weirdly and too much focus was on our two main characters having sex but never really communicating any further than that.

(This doesn’t really have anything to do with anything, but tell me why Psyche masturbates with a tree in this novel. More than once. Hello???)

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review, as well as Atria Books with a physical ARC.