Having read a few other fictitious tales from other authors about gods, goddesses, demigods, and heroes alike, I was interested in a romance heavy tale of the same topic. The story of Psyche and Eros is one of great love and loss. It ranks in my mind as one of the great greek tales with desire, love, and passion as it's centerpiece. However, some of these tales from other authors are written in the same clunky writing style as Homer with a minimal contemporary flair. Luna McNamara wrote this story with the ease of contemporary writing and the content of a great epic.

Together, this made this story easily accessible for both adults and young adults. While it is fiction, the tales of the greek mythology are being retold and kept alive in fiction like this one. Where readers can delve into the story and understand it and be fascinated by it in a way that previous mythology texts didn't allow. Luna McNamara opens a door for readers to enjoy the ancient tales, and, if desired, explore it further through their own research.

I am not a great Greek literary envoy, so I do not know how accurate McNamara was in her retelling and embellishments. I will say, however, that I enjoyed it and it made me want to learn more about not just Psyche and Eros, but Atalanta, Clytemnestra, Helen, Zephyrus, Iphigenia, and others.

Love the story of Psyche and Eros.

But as I was reading noticed the timelines and characters were not quite aligned with the classic stories. It was hard for me to get into. The pacing and cadence of the story was enjoyable but I had a hard time getting past the fact that not all the characters should be together or even in the same stories in the same areas.

This will definitely be great for someone who is not familiar with all the original stories.

Eros, the god of desire, is cursed to fall for the mortal woman, Psyche, but the minute she looks directly at his face, they will be cursed to be apart forever. As they fall in love, they trigger the curse.

Instead of ending the story there, we are taken on their journey as they try to reconnect. I love the way Psyche was portrayed as a fearless woman, fierce in her quest to reunite with her love.

McNamara succeeded in centering Psyche in this Greek mythology retelling while creating a compelling love story. I adored it!

I am all about the Greek mythology. I love the different stories and the different retellings, so when Frenzy mentioned Psyche and Eros by Luna McNamara at their spring presentation, I was all over. I really wasn’t sure what to expect going into it, as I had never heard of either of these names before. I’m not sure how much it follows the actual mythology, but I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy their origin stories presented here.

The Good:
Most Greek mythology is a new retelling of a story I’ve already heard, but not this. Psyche and Eros was completely new to me and I really enjoyed that. It was a fun read, with whit and humor and visits from other more well know Greek gods and individuals. The story moved rather quickly and was a fast read.

The Bad:
I never felt like there was really a pinnacle moment in this book. The flow was steady and even the whole way through, which isn’t bad, but I was left longing for something more. As much as it was something new, there was nothing that grabbed me. I didn’t connect like I did with the stories of Artemis or Hercules. And I have to mention, I fell hard for the cover of this one, but when I went to grab a physical copy the colors were a lot more muted then the digital version. This is a personal preference but I loved the bright vibrant colors.

The Mentionable:
This book follows suit with most Greek mythologies. There is blood and gore. There is sexual scenes. There is mention of rape, physical abuse and murder. There is also the mention of death of parents and loss of mentor due to disease.

I enjoyed this book, but it wasn’t my favorite Greek retelling. If you’re looking for something different maybe check it out and see if it’s the right book for you!

Thank you to Harper Collins Frenzy for the gifted e-Arc. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Such a great telling of the story of Psyche and Eros and the struggles they went through to be together. I have read several different tellings of their story and this one was one of my favorites.

Thanks to William Morrow and Book Club Girl for this ARC!

I enjoyed the story of Psyche and Eros. I also like that it paired with some of the events in Ancient Greek history. I found the first half of the book to be pretty slow but once Psyche received her quest it really picked up. I definitely did not know their story so it was very interesting.

TW// slavery, sexism, incest, mentions of war, cheating, mention of bestiality, physical abuse, violence, rape, suicide, self harm, death (of wives, parents, animals), murder, mention of maternal death

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book, but I think I overall enjoyed it. It was really messy and it had the potential to be a lot better, but it brought some great life to a Greek myth that not everyone knows about.

Psyche and Eros had a terrible opening. There’s no other word for it. The first 20% or so of the book was covering about 18 years in Psyche’s life and thousands of years in Eros’ life. It read like info-dumping at times and a lot of that first 20% of the book wasn’t super relevant to the story. If I had been a historian who wanted to know every detail of this section of Greek history, maybe the start of the book would’ve been interesting, but for the casual reader like myself, this first section of the book is a drag to get through. It would’ve drastically improved the story if the book got rid of all that backstory and instead started at the action, specifically when Eros got impaled by his own arrow.

The middle section of the book starting after the arrow incident was really good. I especially liked every moment when Psyche and Eros were together. While I wasn’t super fond of each of them individually, their talks and their chemistry were really well written. Psyche’s stubborness and daring with Eros’ kind soul and protective heart made for a fun combination.

I also found that the settings in the middle of the book were amazing. The seaside house was my favorite location they spent time at. The seaside house was described so well that I could picture it as if I was sitting in the house. It had unique magic as well that captivated me from start to finish.

The trials were fun in their own unique way. They weren’t my favorite part of the book, but I flew through the trials. They were paced pretty well and I even found myself nervous about whether Psyche would be able to complete them or not. This nervousness shocked me because I had initially found the first section of the book to be so boring that I thought for sure I’d rate the book one star. However, some way along Psyche’s journey, I found that I had begun to care for Psyche.

The ending then ruined my last moments with this book. It quickly rushed through several years of the characters' lives when it should’ve ended sooner, but the most frustrating part of the ending for me was that Psyche all of a sudden lost her powerful and stubborn nature for no reason. Her powerfulness and stubborness were two of the key features of her characterization. To have those all of a sudden disppear for seemingly no reason irritated me. If it had been a gradual disappearance of those traits, it would’ve made a lot more sense but her personality change felt very abrupt.

I appreciated how this book portrayed some of the characters from Greek myth. This version of Hekate, Persephone, Medusa, and Demeter were some of my favorite depictions of them that I have ever read. Luna McNamara did a great job as well with shining light on lesser gods that don’t get as much attention in modern Greek myth stories. Zephyrus in particular was really fun to read about in this story. I would love a whole novel focusing on his romance.

Despite having so many things about this book that I enjoyed, I have one final criticism of it - the story would’ve benefited from more Eros chapters. Eros’ chapters are prevalent in the start and end of the book, but they’re basically nonexistent for the large middle section of the book. A few sections here and there describing his miserable circumstances would’ve helped balance out all of Psyche’s chapters.

My thoughts on this book are a bit all over the place, so it was hard for me to settle on a rating at first, but I think three stars is fairly accurate. It had lots of good moments, but it also had tons of flaws. This book is great for Madeline Miller fans and hardcore Greek mythology fans. However, if you don’t fit into either of those groups, you should skip this one and instead spend your time reading better books.

While I love Greek myths and retellings and I love love stories this one fell a tad flat for me. Reading more like an autobiography of their story rather than them living it in the moment I lost a lot of butterflies (pun intended) and feeling of falling in love I’m sure they had.

The side characters really stole the show more than anything and the bits of history that went by as the story progressed was fun. Seeing Helen of Troy and Achilles and Patroclus, recognizing the bits of history I know. Even the side gods were great and I felt emotionally connected to them and felt they added a lot to the main characters. I wish we saw both Psyche and Eros fall in love with each other, especially Eros being under the curse, Psyche questioned his love when she knew of the curse but I would have loved to watch Eros realize he genuinely loved Psyche in spite of the curse.

I’m excited to receive a hard copy regardless and add it to my collection.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to read this book early! I really enjoyed it. I thought the writing was very well done, and the story kept me interested. I believe my students/patrons would also love this book and will be acquiring it for the library!

I can’t resist a Greek mythology retelling, so I was excited to read Luna McNamara’s take on one of the greatest mythological love stories, Psyche & Eros. I’m drawn to the combination of the traditional story elements along with some fresh reimaginings. Here, the framework of the myth exists but McNamara puts an original twist on it.

This Psyche is a warrior, trained by the great Atalanta. While I love that she can slay monsters and less was made of her appearance, I didn’t always enjoy her attitude. I think she’s meant to be taken as spirited or standing up for herself, but her outspokenness sometimes comes across as abrasive or rude. Her characterization is almost diametrically opposed to Psyche’s usual depiction.

McNamara also takes a lot of liberties with the relationships that are established within Greek mythological cannon, linking Psyche into a branch of Agamemnon’s family tree as a princess of Mycenae. Setting Psyche & Eros’s timeline within the Trojan War is unexpected too and feels like a device to name-drop a number of key Greek heroes, as the war isn’t directly relevant to the central plot.

The prose is solid but the pacing is a bit uneven. The first chunk of the book is slow with a lot of time spent on exposition, but once the pace picked up, I became more invested and enjoyed the second half much more. I would have liked more narrative about Psyche’s quests instead of investing so much detail in side plots that were only vaguely relevant.

Although McNamara’s imaginative approach didn’t entirely work for me, I think it’s a worthy read for fans of Greek myth retellings. Readers of Madeline Miller, Jennifer Saint, and Claire Heywood should consider giving this one a try. Many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me an advance copy of this book.

Sadly this didn't do much for me. I was very excited to read a feminist retelling of the myth of Psyche and Eros but I am not entirely sure where this so called feminist twist came into play other than making Psyche a 'warrior'

I really enjoyed this book! This original slow burn romance retelling of the old greek myth will make you fall in love with these beloved characters again. I have been loving this era of POVs by greek characters and am living for it. The cover is stunning and I really loved how the author made these characters have more human like emotions. I appreciated this new take on Psyche's character and how she broke the norms of society. I recently got done reading Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati and it was fun to revisit those characters again, it made it seem like this book was happening in the same universe. If you love greek myths and retellings this book is for you.

I personally enjoyed the liberties this author took when writing this retelling. Mostly minor changes but they added to the story instead of changing the whole point of the myth. The author uses beautiful prose to set the scenes and makes you feel like you're actually there.




Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC

The book is well-written; the prose is slightly lyrical, slightly formal like a translation of Greek mythology. I was only passingly familiar with the "original" story of Cupid and Psyche, but it's pretty clear that McNamara wanted to put her own spin on the myth. She's only somewhat successful; she throws so many "feminist" arcs into the story that I would not be surprised to learn this started out as a prompt on Tumblr. In fact, she gives Medusa the popular Tumblr interpretation of her being "cursed" as a gorgon, rather than having been born one.

McNamara uses one of my least favourite tropes when it comes to retellings: rather than fully developing a strong female character, she turns Psyche into a "not like the other girls" tomboy. McNamara's Psyche is the sole princess of a small kingdom, but she never lives in the women's quarters or learns how to weave. Instead, she learns to hunt and live in the forest with Atalanta, of all people. Psyche rarely doubts herself, rarely feels despair because she's a strong female warrior. Honestly, it's boring and it's tired.

I liked the book fine, but upon reflection, it's a collection of tired tropes laid over a classic myth. There's nothing particularly special here.

A lovely debut novel by Luna McNamara - can't wait to see what she writes next!!

What I loved:
1. The retelling and reimagining the Greek myth...I love how she interpreted the story!
2. Loved the two perspectives - Eros and Pysche.
3. Love a love story!
4. The cover is stunning!!

What could have been different:
1. There are parts of the book that are choppy - and pacing might be a little off but easy to overcome!!


Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow Books for the chance to read!

This delightful and intelligent retelling of the Psyche and Eros brings more nuance to the myth in ways that are equally delightful and beg you to challenge you understanding of myth and the ways in which we understand them. 4/5

I very much struggled to get into this book and I don't even know why, as this is typically a book I would be very interested in. The book was okay enough, but not something I would really recommend.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC.

This book was better than I expected it to be which is always a good thing! I don't read a ton of mythology retellings, but I really did enjoy this one! I like that things weren't exactly as they were in the original story and that the author took some liberties in changing things around.

Thank you to the publisher, Harper Collins Canada, and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When the oracle of Delphi proclaims that Psyche, princess of Mycenae, is destined to defeat a monster that even the gods fear, she is trained to use weapons and fight though it is untraditional for girls. However, when she unknowingly offends Aphrodite, the goddess sends Eros to inflict a terrible curse upon her. Eros doesn’t care much for humans, but he finds himself unwillingly tangled up with the mortal world when the arrow with the curse accidentally pricks him instead, and he is doomed to yearn for Psyche, knowing that the moment their eyes meet, they will be parted forever.

Initial Thoughts: I love books based on any mythology, but I’ve always been partial to Greek mythology. Having a good familiarity with many source texts, I’m always curious to see how an author will reinterpret the story. This was the first retelling of the story of Eros and Psyche that I’ve ever come across, so I was especially excited to read it.

Plot, World building & Atmosphere: I had very high expectations for this book, but unfortunately a large part of the plot didn’t live up to it. Now I have nothing against artistic license and changing things around a bit, in fact some of my favorite novels based on Greek mythology are retellings, from the Olympus Trilogy to Daughter of Sparta to Lore, all of which deviate significantly from the source texts. But there is usually a purpose to it, whereas in this book, so much was added in from various myths that had so little impact upon the plot in the end.

As far as I remember, in the original story of Eros and Psyche, Psyche was a Greek princess of some unnamed kingdom. This story made her not only the Princess of Mycenae but also the granddaughter of Perseus and somehow inexplicably, the niece of Agamemnon, hence pulling the whole Trojan war into the plot too. It reminded me of Daughter of Sparta which was also a giant mish-mash of myths that weren’t anywhere close together on the real timeline, the difference being that there was actually a point to in that book.

All in all, I found myself less than impressed by this book. I really wanted to like it, but plot wise, it didn’t work for me.

Writing & Narration: That said, the pacing was decent even if the story did meander a bit in the beginning, and it was easy to read. It was narrated in alternating POVs of Psyche and Eros, a style that worked pretty well despite the first several chapters not being in sync in terms of timelines.

Characters: The main characters had great arcs and a lot of depth. The portrayal of Psyche as a warrior worked surprisingly well in my opinion. It felt a little cliched in the beginning when all that was happening was Psyche’s training montages, but as the story went on, it became evident how the training of a warrior has also shaped her strong personality. The author has gone with Eros’ origin story as per Hesiod for this book, and I found his arc a fascinating one to read.

On the downside, the myth of Eros and Psyche is supposed to be a romance, but I felt there was hardly any time dedicated to it at all which was quite disappointing.

Ending: Most of the interesting stuff happened in the last 25% of the book to be honest, including Psyche’s three labors. Psyche’s actual quest went by much faster than I liked – almost too simple – these were her quests, her labors to win back Eros and they were more or less the blink of an eye when this should have been the highlight of the story. The ending itself was a little different from the original, and an interesting twist on it all. However, I found it odd that the consequences of Eros’ decision were never shown on page and surely there had to be some.

Final Thoughts & Recommendation: Overall, this was still an entertaining read. It didn’t really change much of the core of the story, just added stuff around it so it just read like a myth instead of a reimagining or retelling. But most importantly, this is one of the few myths that has a happy ending and I’m glad it was maintained that way in this book. If you’re a fan of Greek mythology retellings, I would recommend this book.

Again, another instance of retellings that I just can't get behind. This one takes our sweet, kind, hard-working, persistent, and courageous but also naïve and flawed Psyche is turned into some wannabe Amazon for the sake of appealing to modern sensibilities that can't stand a woman who can't fight and save herself, apparently.

The story becomes a name-dropping marathon of Who's Who in Greek mythology. Everyone worth a mention in the heroic cycle appears here. The author decided this story would take place during the Trojan War timeline, because why not, a time where human sacrifice was still practised, but somehow making a feminine girl a tomboy so she's properly feminist is more important than the horrific customs of the time.

So, no, this isn't a good retelling for so many reasons but mainly for the incongruous pastiche of Everything Goes plots. And it isn't even a good romance because there's such a throng of characters and mishmashed plotlines that there's hardly any time for Eros and Psyche to build a relationship.