TW: sexual harassment

This is a pretty popular Hades and Persephone retelling, so I decided to give it a try. It sadly falls into the trap of many of the retellings I’ve read that feature these characters - the characters end up feeling a little flat. The Persephone character had the spunk and fire that I like seeing, but she almost seemed to purposely misunderstand things to add to the miscommunication plot line. The Hades here wasn’t my favorite since he was more of a bad boy and that’s not how I personally like my Hades. And the side characters, even some of the other gods, were one note.

Another trap I see a lot in these retellings is the characters connecting way too quickly. These books tend to rely on the “fated” thing a lot instead of building an actual dynamic. And since this book has its fair share of smut, that led to a lot of sex scenes that felt forced into the plot because I didn’t buy that these characters would have their guard down that quickly, but it’s clear the author wanted a lot of sex scenes so they were put in anyway.

I did enjoy how the Underworld was depicted here, which is always a plus.

If you like direct retellings of the myth, you may like this more than I did but this felt like so many others that I’ve read before and I’m getting bored.