Huge thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

Unfortunately, this didn't work for me. First of all, it was marketed as a sensual retelling, but I didn't expect the amount of sex scenes. For almost half of the book, it's nothing but sex scene upon sex scene upon sex scene. With Eros, with Eros again but with different genitals, with a tree, with a pestle and mortar... I wish I was making this up. Psyche is borderline obsessed with sex and Eros uses that to shut her up whenever she doesn't want to answer her questions.

Which brings me to another thing that I didn't like: Eros. In this, she constantly refuses to open up to Psyche, and regularly gaslights her so that Psyche feels guilty about her completely normal emotions. She never puts herself in Psyche's shoes or try to understand why she feels what she feels.

The story also felt really unbalanced because it takes 70% of the book for Psyche to do what anyone familiar with the myth knows she will, but then the aftermath, trials and resolution all get rushed in the last 30%.

The writing is beautiful at times, but too often it is over-flowery, one sentence running on and on for an entire paragraph without really saying anything.

The highlight for me was Psyche herself and I enjoyed her growth and her pursuit of freedom. I also liked the portrayal of Aphrodite as a loving mother; I feel like she mostly gets cast as a one-dimensional, vain, petty goddess so it was interesting to focus on another aspect of her.

Sadly, that's not a lot of positive and I can't say I really enjoyed reading this. I probably would have dnfed had I not been given a review copy in exchange for my honest opinion. Besides, I really hope trigger warnings were added in the final version.

TW: sexual assault, domestic violence, abusive power dynamics, sexism