Sweetbitter Song is an absolutely breathtaking retelling of The Odyssey in which Penelope wasn't the dutiful wife awaiting her husband's return but the lover of an enslaved girl whom she met in her youth, all told from Melantho's perspective. This book serves up a level of yearning and angst found in few books and it tore my heart to shreds in the most delicious way possible.

There are so many problems with their relationship, so many barriers that should keep them apart, both exterior (class and power differences, the fact that Penelope is married, the fact that they're both women, etc.) and interior (painful history, misunderstandings and real hurt due to the class and power differences, etc.). I really enjoyed that it wasn't just one kind of barrier keeping them apart, which added a lot of depth to the angst and tragedy that unfolded for them. The things that kept them apart are real problems and, in fact, their relationship could even be considered a little problematic, but for me that made it all the more delicious.

As is likely clear from the beginning of this review and the cover of the book itself, though this book is a retelling, it is primarily focused on the relationship between Penelope and Melantho. For readers who love sapphic relationships dripping with angst, this will be delicious like it was for me. But for other readers who heavily prioritize worldbuilding realism, complete accuracy in myth retellings, or want to really feel the ancient Greek feeling, this may disappoint. This is a modern sapphic take on a retelling and so is not going to feel like many other retellings, certainly not exactly like the source material. Additionally, there are a handful of issues with the realism/continuity of the worldbuilding that may be unpleasant for some readers but were incidental to me.

But for me, this book was an absolute work of art. Since the primary point of the book is the relationship, the worldbuilding and other aspects read to me as intentionally hazy. For me, this book is a Monet, not a Courbet. Like other works of art, it's not going to be to everyone's taste, but by god I can't stop staring at it myself.

As an added bonus, the audiobook was fantastic. The subtle differences in accents provided a lot of texture to the world. The narrator did a wonderful job selecting tones and accents for various characters according to their position in society and personality.

Bottom line: if you like emotional rollercoasters and the brand of angst that sapphic books in particular seem to nail, you're going to love this.

I found this book to be a bit of a disappointment after the first one. I gave the first book a light four stars for the worldbuilding, but this one is really at a generous three stars. My main issue with this book was that it meandered quite a bit. There was clearly an ending that the author was aiming for, but it really did feel like she was just trying to fill space between resolving the cliffy from the end of the first book and the ending that she was trying to write towards. This sequel very much did not need to be 494 pages, and I often found myself sort of drifting towards boredom at various points in the middle of this book.

tl;dr After the events of the first book, Jack and Adaira have been separated and must find a way to come together again. Beyond those troubles, the spirits are not only starting to chafe against their king's tyranny, but they are also suffering from a blighted illness that is crossing into the human realms. It may take cooperation across the whole isle (and a little music) to deal with the illness as well as to save the Isle of Cadence, spirits and humans alike, from Bane's anger.

In the first book, I had really wanted the spirts to play a bigger role rather than only appearing when Jack had summoned them with his harp. In this book, the spirits played a much bigger role, which I enjoyed...but it was a little bit too little, too late. For all that the characters talked about how important the spirits were in the first book, they really did not feature as much as I had thought they would, so the fact that they were so heavily featured in the sequel made it feel unbalanced across the duology as a whole. That said, I did enjoy the new spirit characters, especially Hap and Ash, and I enjoyed how the spirits and humans had to work together in order to deal with the blight and defeat Bane.

I also found that the characters really felt like they were retreading old ground from the first book, especially Torin and Sidra. In the first book, Torin was injured by a knife with a silencing enchantment on it so that he had to be silent, which led to his character development in terms of appreciating his wife and what he had more and to let his anger go. In this book, Torin ends up stuck in the spirit realm and is able to see Sidra while she can not see him; through this experience, he learns to...appreciate his wife more and let go of his anger. It really just felt like the exact same story for this pairing that was told a different way, which was a little frustrating because I was like "Didn't he already learn this lesson once??"

Jack and Adaira had a slightly different story in that obviously, they started this book already together and married, but I just found that I didn't...care that much about it? I don't know if it's because I'm just very much not a romantasy person or because they were bland people, but I found their sections to just be pretty boring. They were each other's strength and compensated for each other's weakness and pushed each other to be their best selves, blah blah blah. I obviously don't want drama for the sake of drama, but it just felt like it was lacking a sense of conflict. All the conflict came from the plot, which normally I probably would have been fine with (it's not like I don't like happy couples!) but the plot felt too weak to hold up the whole book.

Honestly, this book felt a little extraneous. The author obviously needed to resolve the cliffhanger, but if things in the first book had been tied up differently and maybe been a bit longer, I think the whole story could have been written as one book. Honestly, the blight and the spirits could have made up the plot of the first book, and the truth of Adaira's parentage could have come out that way; Moray had always felt like a weird loose thread that didn't quite fit, both in that book and here, and all the main plot points could still have been hit. And that way, the spirits could have played a bigger role from the beginning of the series.

I will say that I did enjoy some parts of this plot. I really liked the island coming together to deal with Bane, the illness, and just building relationships, and the way that the Lairds of the East and West led by example. I found myself really liking and respecting Innes and the way that she pushed herself to grow beyond her prejudices because of her newfound daughter. And I enjoyed the background of how Bane came to be and how Jack used his own musical abilities to face him. The folklore aspect of this story was still great, and I really enjoyed the parallels between Torin/Sidra and Innes/David as well as Jack finally getting to reunite with his father.

Was this worth a read? Eh. I was curious about how the threads from the first book would be resolved, but I don't know that it was worth the read per se. Sadly, I don't know that this author is for me; I probably could have just read a summary of this book and been perfectly happy.

See my Elements of Cadence series reviews:

A River Enchanted (#1) | here A Fire Endless (#2) | here

Curse me and my gremlin desire to finish a series I started. I guess people who enjoyed the first book will have a good time with this one but with this being even longer and even more meandering than "A River Enchanted", it was a lost cause for me. In the end, I started skimming pages just to get it over with and for that I'll personally send myself to book jail. At least we met lots and lots of spirit folks. I wish I could sing myself into the earth now.

I wish we'd gotten more of the relationship between Carmilla and Laura and less folktale retelling by men but then again, I'm a sucker for folktales