Thank you Netgalley and HQ stories for the opportunity to read and review this book!

I am a huge fan of capricious gods and goddesses, so when I saw Aphrodite, I was excited to read it. The beginning was intriguing with Aphrodite's birth from the castration foam of Ouranos and her subsequent handling of the threads of fate.

The book is written in a very comical tone, and the more I read, the more I realized it wasn't for me. There are places where it's clear the author has a deep understanding of Greek mythology and the original sources, but I just found myself getting more or less annoyed as I continued to read. The characters seemed more like the punchline to a joke than someone to be sympathized with, and I found it really hard to care at all. Additionally, Hestia is made into literally the most overbearing, irritating person imaginable. Don't even get me started on Aphrodite and Ares's relationship: his nickname for her- foamy- was the really what pushed me over the edge.

I can appreciate what the author was going for with this book, and I'm sure it will resognate with some people. I struggled to get through this book though, which is really sad because I had high hopes

This was a good retelling of Aphrodite once I got into the writing style which was some what humorous in tone. I liked the different pov from all the featured gods which gave a few sides of the story. I found the pacing a little slow but that was fine for this type of book. I did chuckle a few times during this while also finding out more about aphrodites story which was interesting and of course had tinges of sadness

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc

Welcome the Real Housewives of Olympus

Stunning, brilliant, witty, so delicious it could only be divine.

Maisie Peters once wrote, ‘I am the Iliad of course you couldn’t read me’
Because as we know greek mythology books can be notoriously ‘difficult’ to read. It isn’t something you tend to pick up for a light hearted, easy read. And by difficult I just mean you have to adjust to the language and can get lost and overwhelmed with names. We all know Circe is a masterpiece, but she’s tough too.

Not Aphrodite though.

This might be one of my favourite greek retellings to date. It is multiple pov and the only way I can describe it is like a Real Housewives of Olympus. Each of the characters are telling the reader their story, with Aphrodite being the main narrator and voice, even butting in on other characters storytelling. So you get the ‘interview’ moments of characters talking directly to the reader but also recapping of the storyline. There is also a lot of modern language used to make the dialogue and narration much more digestible and very entertaining. The tv show Dickinson is a great example of the type of narration used.

My deepest thanks to netgalley and the publishers for this arc. I adore reading greek mythology retellings.

I already cannot wait to own a special edition (she better have a special edition) on my shelf as a trophy

only down side of the arc was the family trees and aphrodite’s footnotes (hilarious btw) weren’t formatted perfectly for reading on an e-reader but I am confident that will be sorted for the final version