THE DECEPTIONS was not the book I was expecting when I downloaded it. Bialosky's writing style wasn't something that resonated with me and I found it difficult to read past the first half of the book.

This book will deceive you. Totally not what I was expecting in the best way possible. Definitely recommend this pick for your next book club read.

This book draws strongly from Greek mythology, and might require some background knowledge to get the full force of the allegory. Overall though, I found the book lacked a sense of urgency and did not keep my attention all the way through,

This was a really appealing concept to me but I found the execution to feel messy and busy and crammed full of stuff that was all good but just should have been cut down substantially. I didn't finish.

My interest was immediately piqued by the blurb opening up the book. Kind of sad and disturbing but overall worth it. If you know about Greek mythology I imagine it would be even better.

I've tried to finish this one on several occasions and I've just found it's not for me.

Three stars for the author's writing. I think this is a case of good book, wrong person.

I liked this book, but I really didn't care for the stream of consciousness style. I liked the mixing in of Greek mythology.

A beautiful and complicated novel by one of our country's most important writers. I loved the vivid language and close attention to language and mood here.

Loved the description of this book, but it fell flat. Stream of consciousness is hard to do well and I found the beginning boring… I also find books with no chapters hard to read. I did really enjoy the mythology but not enough for me to truly enjoy the book.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Counterpoint for the e-book! The Deceptions is led by an unnamed unreliable narrator as she navigates life dealing with her strained marriage, a missing daughter, her son while he’s away at school and a book of poetry that she is working to have published. Making frequent trips to the museum as a school teacher, she begins to frequently go on her own time, searching for answers to the questions to solve her life’s problems in relation to Greek and Roman mythology and art. The way this story unravels was very engaging. While I’m not super familiar with Greek/Roman mythology, the author adds photos of the art pieces and thorough explanations of the Gods, making it an accessible read for anyone else unfamiliar. The writing style and symbolism are stunning and I loved following the main character’s story line. I definitely recommend for people into mythology and modern feminist literary fiction.

This novel was very well done and may be an even more enjoyable read for someone that appreciates Greek mythology that is interspersed throughout the book.

While I loved the narrative, I wasn’t a fan of how the dialogue seemed to get lost on the page. It seemed confusing at times but was otherwise lovely.

In what could have been a very dark book, Bialosky managed to create a beautiful soul-stirring story about a woman poet who is juggling many things in her life: she is about to publish a new book, her only child has left the nest, and a husband who is slowly pushing himself away from their relationship. Amongst this chaos, she finds clarity amongst the sculptures at the Met and ultimately confides in the reader her deepest and darkest secrets.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎𝒔 𝑰’𝒗𝒆 𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒆𝒅.

The impending doom of wrecking your own life, that is what I felt throughout the story. The narrator’s son (a gifted athlete to her husband’s delight) is off to college, she’s at ‘loose ends’ after eighteen years of tending to her only child. Her husband is loyal to his obsession, watching sports, and the fire in their marriage has been extinguished. She is a woman who lives on her rich imagination, feeding it life via visits to Metropolitan Museum of Art where she ponders the Greek and Roman art, sculptures and mythologies, finding connections to the modern world, especially her own complicated life. It is the one place she goes to restore herself. Her book of poetry is due for release soon, with it are the pending reviews she is ridden with anxiety over. Her husband doesn’t understand her, doesn’t seem to have desires for the richer life experiences that lure her. She has deferred so much to be with him, hasn’t she? It seems he takes it for granted. The glue that held them together, so many marriages together, is off living his own life now, of course she has no end of worries over her son too, especially when he is fickle about communication. Who are they now, when it’s just the two of them and what the hell does art, The Iliad and The Odyssey have to do with her existence? Twenty years of marriage, and it’s an empty bellied love, a wasteland, is there anything left that can be salvaged? Why is she so hungry for tragedy, elated by the ruin within myths? Why is her home, ‘a house of silence?’

Ruin and tragedy aren’t always fiction, and she connects the lessons, the imbalance of power, the struggle of the sexes, desires, yearning, the limitations, the punishment imparted by the gods upon us all. What torments us more than the evolution of our marriage and family? The elation of the early days and the trauma when “our true selves emerge”? The necessary vigilance when we have to tend to our young children and the gasping horror of setting them free, with the clawing fear something irredeemable or fatal will occur when we’re no longer standing guard. Speaking of true selves, what about our narrator? She tells us that, “something terrible has happened and I don’t know what to do.” What happened? She also tells us she no longer knows herself. She is teaching at a boys’ prep school when she becomes close to the visiting poet, flattered by his admiration of her. It appears to be a meeting of the minds, finally someone at the academy who understands the process of creation, whose work she is even, yes… she admits it, jealous of. He has a way of stripping her of her defenses, before long they form an intense friendship. Secret worlds are built, but as she informs us, her husband has his secrets too. We are witness to the castles in the air she builds, but who isn’t guilty of that? All our little mental escapades, the running narrative we have about our lives and our role in it? We are blinded by our wounds; we fall into traps of our own making sometimes. We let ourselves become vulnerable and often at the wrong time or with the wrong people.

The writing is very engaging, the exploration of entitlement, men, domination, their sexual drives, her lack of understanding the male mind, it’s revelatory. The emotions buried, the bargains made in partnerships and how our fantasies about the way things should be or could be disrupt, sometimes upend the reality of what is. The human need for approval is measured differently for a woman when she is setting out to create. Can she survive the thrust of severe judgement and betrayal? It’s a cruel thing when the narrative shifts and your own mythologies burn you. There is a creeping horror in this story, I know that sounds strange because it isn’t a nightmarish tale but it’s awful, knowing the life you have made is so easy to capsize. That maybe our sins aren’t always made with malicious intent, but because for a moment we forget ourselves and such things happen during times of change. Is she a victim? Are the things she does a willing sacrifice? There is so much to sift through, and it left me wondering, how much were boundaries society set compared to lines she drew for herself? Because make no mistake, there are always limits, based on the era we’re in and our upbringing that are hard to surmount. What an intelligent story of love, motherhood, creativity and ruin. Never have I been more gripped by Greek and Roman mythology. I think this is a book many will experience differently depending upon their age, and I love that.

Publication Date: September 6

Counterpoint

I really regret to say I couldn’t get myself to finish this book, no matter how hard I tried. I immediately struggled getting into the book due to difficulty distinguishing dialogue from inner thought, and I found that this made reading the book feel like much more of a chore than enjoyable. I wanted to enjoy the plot, but the writing was too stream-of-consciousness for me, and it felt all over the place as well. I didn’t enjoy the overly historical and mythological aspects of the book, but even with skimming through these parts I decided to DNF about 35% of the way through. I’m sure there is someone out there who will love this book as the author truly seems like a brilliant writer, but unfortunately it just wasn’t for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Counterpoint for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A tough call - this will probably be best appreciated by fans of literary fiction and those who know at least a small amount of Greek mythology, which looms large in the unnamed narrator's thoughts and life. She's a poet whose latest book is about to be published but her life is a mess-her child has left for college and her husband has emotionally left her as well. However, she's formed an attachment to a visiting poet at the school where they both teach. She goes to the Met, to see the Greek and Roman sculpture for solace. You won't know for a while what the terrible thing is but this is, to be fair, an overall melancholy read. It's also quite self conscious as it's pretty much all up in her head. While I found some of it pretentious, I also found myself turning the pages. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. An added benefit- I found myself looking up various Greek myths.

I want to start off by saying that the way this book started immediately made me want to keep reading. It was going really well at first, but then it became more of a chore for me to read. The way that the book is written made it difficult for me to keep up. The dialogue being intermixed with the narrator’s thoughts made it hard to follow. Also, the writing style was sort of sophisticated in a way that was hard for me to process what I was reading. I’m sure that this could be 5 stars for someone, but I tend to prefer lighter reads. This book was interesting, but I took way too long to read it, because, to me, it felt like i was reading a required novel for school.

I’m giving this one 3 stars because I feel like I would be cheating the book with anything less.

Sort of like a B-Side to DELPHI by Clare Pollard, although I guess it depends on which one you read first. The classics (cassettes, Greek mythology) never really go out of style.

The main character shows us how we become overwhelmed by everyday responsibilities and slowly forget who we are. An impressively written story of a woman who has an awakening and is open to new possibilities in her life. She let societal restraints confine her and is set free.

Disclaimer: Thank you to NetGalley and Counterpoint for this ARC, I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

As an art and ancient greek mythology lover I really wanted to love this one but it fell short. Maybe I am just not at the age that I can enjoy angsty middle aged divorce stories but it felt very depressing and not in a meaningful way. I enjoyed the museum components and art appreciation

The Deceptions is the story of a middle aged English teacher dealing with the aftermath of trauma, a failing marriage, and an empty nest. The narrator, who remains unnamed for most of the novel, frequents the Met and uses the museum's collections as a lens to help her process what's going on in her own life.

I enjoyed getting in the narrator's head and liked the use of images from the museum collection -- not something I've come across before! Some of the details about various Greek myths and sculptures couldn't hold my interest, but I appreciated them anyway. I thought the device of the museum worked very well to show how the narrator thinks and how our own experiences affect how we interpret other works of art, and the writing was stellar overall.

While I enjoyed the storytelling, pacing, and writing, the plot was lackluster. Reflections on sexism felt like very familiar ground and I would've liked to see it go a little deeper, especially on the differences between older and younger generations.

Difficult book for me to read. The art/museum/Greek mythology interspersed into the book was confusing. Wanted to like this book..

Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.