This started off really intriguing and nicely creepy, but it fell flat for me fairly quickly once everything began to be explained in great detail and the initial mood was lost in the focus on plot twists.

The characters also felt quite shallow, and the book seemed to rely heavily on its mysteries to carry the whole story. I did enjoy the interwoven narratives and the twists themselves, but I honestly don’t understand where the horror elements were supposed to be. To me, this felt more like a fairly surface-level mystery novel.

Once again, such a beautifully and uniquely written book from Rebecca Ross. It felt like reading a parallel version of Roman mythology in the way it dives so deeply into the gods, their politics, and their whims, while also giving space to surprisingly nuanced and evolving characters.

On top of all that, the love story between the main couple is woven into the narrative in a truly wonderful way, and at times it felt almost as compelling as in Divine Rivals. My only small drawback is that, compared to that book, this leaned a bit too much into insta love for my taste, and the time jumps made it harder to fully immerse myself in the story.

That said, everything else carries it so well that I’m genuinely amazed by how expansive a world the author managed to build within this page count, without really relying on the main books of the series. A strong recommendation, especially if you loved Divine Rivals!

I’ve enjoyed all of Emily Henry’s books, as well as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which this is most often compared to, but this just didn’t work for me. Somehow, trying to be two quite different books at the same time ended up making neither side work, and I didn’t really care about anything that was happening.

It was still readable as light entertainment, but compared to her previous books, this was a disappointment.