A review by burniescrolls
Receiver of Many by Rachel Alexander

1.0

Okay. Well. This was awful.

After reading Neon Gods I was really craving another Hades and Persephone retelling, and this one seemed rather promising, only to be exactly what I didn't want.

Combining one of my least favourite tropes - miscommunication - and an abundance of poorly written smutty scenes. What could go wrong?

Persephone was an incredibly annoying protagonist, who never listened to anyone around her and lacked any modicum of common sense. Hades was fine, nothing particularly wrong with him, other than the fact that the first smutty scene was somewhat dubcon?

The perspective would occasionally shift to other characters who nine times out of ten I didn't really care about. The switch being even more annoying when it would happen when something vaguely plot related would happen (which was lacking).

This book pretended to have a plot but then would spend pages and pages on Persephone and Hades having some sort of stupid misunderstanding followed by unnecessarily detailed and often cringe 'spicy' scene.

The first 10 and the final 20 percent of the book had interesting story beats, but again they took a back seat to the author's constant desire to have Hades have sex with the innocent and inexperienced Persephone in varying and increasingly 'different' ways.

A few smutty scene no-nos:
- having sex in the dirt
- using the word lips once in one sentence to reference both pairs of said lips
- the word member, just why
- just the words - why?

The ending was quite literally one of the stupidest things I've read - by which I mean it ended as the plot started to become even remotely interesting/progress.

Just not even gonna bother with the sequel.