Reviews with content warning for Child death - Ariadne

idk how to feel about this book. honestly i think im becoming a bit… disillusioned with greek mythology retellings at the moment. i honestly think they swing big and either really succeed or meander. and i would say this book follows the later.

i really couldn’t connect with this book at all. the ending felt rushed, and after the minotaur story was completed, the story felt as if it was floundering. obviously the entire book can’t be about life at crete but the fact it barely even covered 100 pages really let this book down.

ariadne was at best a blank slate to narrate the tales of dionysus, and at worst was incredibly boring and annoying. i understand her naivety is fundamental to her story but it was overdone 200 pages in, and by the end i was over her.

phaedra was kind of likeable i guess. i enjoyed her at the beginning, but as soon as her story moved to her & hippolyta, she became insufferable. seriously when

her & ariadne were fighting over hippolyta

i didn’t agree with either of them. her ending also felt rushed and she lacked any depth being her impulsivity and brash nature.

dionysus was boring as well. he seemed to be all over the place with his characterisation, and his ending felt like it against everything earlier set up in the book. i get that was kind of the point but from a reader’s perspective it’s just a tad stupid.

i also think i became disillusioned with saint’s writing style by the end. to begin with i loved her descriptions and her poetic way of writing, but after the 20th sentence telling us that women always pay the price for a man’s crime i was over it. this book felt like it was going in circles constantly.

now you might ask - why did i finish this? because i own a copy of this, and i was curious to see if it could redeem itself the more it progressed. i don’t like to DNF books i own - if its a library or ebook sure she’s going in the DNF pile. but i paid $26 for this i was finishing it either way. and yet why didn’t i give this a 1-star? because i was still curious to see where this went. i wasn’t invested in the characters but i was invested in where things would go.

idk i don’t think i had too much fun reading this. the beginning was intriguing, but after ariadne’s arrival at noxus the book fizzled away. and also the ending was dumb, anticlimatic and yet again rushed.

i will defo be taking a break from retellings for a while after this one!

Content Warnings

annasbookjournal's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.0

A bit of a harsh review, but here goes.

As soon as I finished this book, I wanted to have nothing to do with it anymore and it took me a bit to write a review about it.

The writing and the choices in the depiction of Ariadne were really disappointing for me. In an interview, Jennifer Saint talks about how passionate and angry Ariadne was in a source that Saint read, and how powerful her voice was, but I don’t see that at all in this book. I feel like many of the deep emotions that Ariadne would have felt were breezed over in a page and never talked about.

Like when Phaedra committed suicide, Ariadne’s grief is never ever talked about: she literally just goes back to how her life was and even says that it was EASY to do so. That is not the sisterly love that I would like to read in a feminist book.

The way that Ariadne was depicted in the beginning of the book in particular made me question if this was the best way to retell the myth: her character is described as a horny girl who just wants to do first Theseus and then Dionysus. I feel like there was no depth to her whatsoever and that’s really disappointing. The point of a retelling (especially from a feminist POV) is to show that the women were more than pawns, that they had emotions of their own and that they weren’t stupid like the ancient people thought. We, on the other side, are handed a horny girl who can’t even come up with a plan on her own and has to depend on Theseus and Daedalus. WTF.

I believe that the only good points from this book are the descriptions of the hard moments of pregnancy that Phaedra goes through.

I also found myself countless times feeling like the choice of vocabulary was very modern, even though the setting for the scenes were ancient royal Greeks.

I don’t think I’m going to read any of Saint’s other mythological retellings after this.

Content Warnings

noragoudie's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This book is my favorite of the two I have read by Jennifer Saint, but it falls into the same traps. Once again, the prose is beautiful and the backdrop and immersion into Greek mythology is masterfully done. However, strong female characters are built up only to make foolish decisions that feel neither intriguing nor thought provoking. So much potential, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

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tmholsman_1994's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I really wanted to like this book because I love Greek mythology, but I honestly did not like it. I found it a little hard to get into at first and then I started to enjoy it, but then when I looked up the myth of Ariadne I started to not really enjoy this version of the myth. It doesn't really divert from the original myth, which is fine, but sometimes I want something more than just reading a 300 page book telling me about what happened to her. I liked the detail we got about what happened to her on Naxos before Dionysus came back to his island, but in my opinion I would have rather had a modern retelling than just the myth told over.

Content Warnings

hannah_hodges's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Reading this book made me update my content warnings afterwards haha! I enjoyed learning about the two sisters and the heroes/gods they were tangled up with. This isn’t a comment on the writing style, as I thought Saint told the story well, but reading Ariadne and Phaedra’s story and seeing it unravel was a bit like watching a car crash - horrifying but you can’t really look away. I thought the experience of Postpartum Depression was very well written, especially in contrast to the other character’s experience of motherhood. I raced through reading this book and I think it was good to stretch outside my comfort zone and read a sad/emotional/dark book (not my vibe at all lol) but I’ll be paying more attention to content warnings and mood in the future!

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kfergy's review against another edition

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dark relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Enjoyable read - definitely a good fit for those familiar with Greek mythology and always wanted a bit more context to the parables. Good reflection upon traditional femininity and independence, though the ending doesn't necessarily leave you inspired (it's not supposed to)

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aliyahoff's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

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lauren_shilling's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book was amazing! It took me way too long to read it, and it may have been a five star if I wasn't in such a terrible reading slump when I read it, because I don't really have any criticisms of it except that it didn't give me the feeling I get when I know I'm reading a five star book. Again, that may be because of the reading slump. The writing in this book was so gorgeous, and I found some new quotes that I absolutely love. There are definitely some new favorite quotes in this book for me. The portrayal of Ariadne and her sister Phaedra, and how they lead such different lives as a result of one event was so interesting. The way their experiences shape who they become and how they interact with others was very well developed. Their experiences were so different, but in many ways reading about Phaedra's experiences was like holding up a mirror to Ariadne's, allowing me to see it in a more well-rounded way, and Ariadne's experiences felt like holding up a mirror to Phaedra's. It gave a very wholistic picture of both characters, as well as some others, and it was very interesting and very well done. The conversation about women and how they are effected by and punished the carelessness of men, especially in mythology, was so in depth and thought provoking. I would love to reread this book later on when I am not in a slump, because it really made me think.

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