A review by iwwv
Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

2.0

do not read this if youre looking for anything similar to the original play. i was really intrigued by the concept of a lady macbeth centred retelling, and i thought it was well written in terms of prose (and the audiobook narrator did a great job too). however, this book very quickly fell off a cliff and didnt really recover itself. perhaps this is my own mistake but i was not expecting it to deviate from the plot of macbeth as much as it did, or i was expecting more of a backstory for lady macbeth. its essentially a complete rewrite - with the witches kept in a basement and a cursed half dragon guy as a love interest ??

roscille and the few other women had actually interesting characters, though roscille as a scared 17 year old is so different to the original lady macbeth that this book wouldve been better as its own story with new characters. she is turned from a powerful manipulator to an abuse victim, who is repeatedly beaten down by the men around her until the kinda confusing ending in which she kills macbeth with the help of the witches and her magical gaze. again it could have been good and interesting in its own right if it wasnt supposed to be lady macbeth.

the men (aside from the half dragon love interest) felt like nothing more than violent brutes that were all basically identical to each other. i lost count of the amount of times reid tells you just how big and strong and imposing macbeth is. most of the violence against roscille felt like it was just there for shock value, by banquo and fleance, and macbeth himself. then you have the love interest, who has like one moment of conflict with roscille when she tries to kill him then is so nice and devoted and not like other guys that its almost comical in comparison to the rest of the men. their whole romance and the presentation of his dragon form just like. lusting after roscille so badly felt very weird to me. theres something to be said about their statuses as magical/cursed outsiders drawing them to each other, as theres someone who can finally ‘see’ them, but i really could not get myself to care about them at all.

overall an incredibly disappointing read.