Lilith is a difficult book to review. On one hand, I can think of several people to whom I might suggest the title. On the other, I personally found it disappointing, much better in concept than execution.

And, yeah, the premise sounds amazing--after her expulsion from Eden, Lilith has her sights set on justice. She'll save Eve, restore Asherah, and bring balance back into the world. But as I was reading I was just so underwhelmed by Lilith's character. I didn't care about her, didn't identify with her, didn't find her motives or actions compelling. In fact, for far too much of the book she did far too little. Add to that a boatload of uneven pacing (if you've read already this you'll wonder if that was a Noah allusion), inconsistent tone, and a too-strong too-constant misandric theme, and I found myself just wanting to put the book down (the 'and never pick it up again' is clearly implied here, right?). As someone who loves, loves, loves mythic retellings and biblical fiction, it's hard to believe that I was just the wrong reader for this book.

So, two stars because, in the end, it didn't completely suck. But is that really the bar we're looking for?

I love the story of Lilith, but found that this one wasn't exactly what I was expecting or wanting. That being said, I can definitely see a major appeal in it for a ton of people.

The description for Nikki Marmery’s upcoming novel, Lilith was tailored made for my tastes – it focuses on a character whose depiction in popular culture is ripe for a re-telling, especially with a feminine twist. When it came to the novel’s execution, however, I found the book to be a slog. It has a lot to say and great points to make, but it relied too heavily on a sledgehammer approach for my taste. Additionally, I found Lilith as a narrator to be incredibly frustrating for a number of reasons (the main one being that despite thousands of years of existence she seems incapable of learning much that proves useful and blatantly ignores the obvious – or maybe it’s just that the heavy-handed foreshadowing of her narration makes her feel melodramatic and incompetent). So, while I appreciated the concept and the story did open alternative understandings of familiar figures and stories from the Bible, I found the book didn’t hold my attention or interest very well.

Lilith is getting along fine in Eden in the beginning. But things start to go wrong when she has been gifted the Secret by the goddess Asherah (fruit of the Tree of Knowledge) and Adam begins to abuse her. Driven from Eden, Lilith keeps watch when Eve is created and similarly made subservient by Adam. Prompting her to learn the same Secret so she may escape from Adam’s mistreatment, Lilith must watch through the centuries as the goddess Asherah along with her followers are disparaged and forgotten by Adam’s jealous God and his people. Determined to find Asherah and restore her and her teachings to their rightful place in the world, Lilith suffers many losses and disappointments along the way as she nevertheless continues to find hope that one day the balance of the world will be restored.

I can have a difficult time with first person narratives in general, but there was something in Lilith’s narrative voice that was too flat to work for me, though it fit the character herself. She is immortal and almost a goddess herself at times. She is narrating from a much later period in time after she has endured thousands of years and multitudes of disappointments and grief. It makes sense that she would come across as detached when reflecting on events from hundreds and thousands of years earlier – she is so far removed from the events and the wounds have scabbed over even if they’ve never fully healed. The devastation and grief color her reflections so that she builds up her stories with fore-warnings that they won’t end well. It all makes sense from a story-planning approach. But it also all worked together against my ability to enjoy the novel. A passing familiarity with the Bible and the legends of the figures featured in Lilith meant that the narrator’s fore-warnings were far from necessary and destroyed my ability to invest in the characters, and therefore, to care at all about the novel’s loose plot. The short chapters and jumping around in place and time only exacerbated matters.

This all left me with little more than the themes to try and hold my interest. While I appreciate the way Lilith highlights the ways that women were actively left out and/or their reputations were trampled in the recorded histories and foundational stories throughout the ages, I found the repetitive and heavy-handed way the ideas are presented in Lilith to be tedious. The pacing and structure only exacerbated that feeling of treading water. When I got to the final section of the novel and the overarching thread of Lilith’s personal mission gets resolved, it didn’t feel like it carried the weight it was meant to. For me, both Lilith as a character and that overarching thread were a way to tie together the main figures and stories that Marmery actually wanted to focus on but which were too far apart in time to link in a concrete way. Unfortunately, that connective tissue is just too flimsy.

Lilith is available October 10, 2023.

I made it to about 20% before I DNFd. It just didn't hold my attention. I do respect the ambitious attempt at a biblical retelling and I love the feminist view point. While it didn't grip me, I'm sure it will work for others.

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for retellings. I especially have a soft spot in my heart for books based on religious stories. This story actually got me pretty good. A reimagining of the story of creation. I was very much not on board with Jezebel. That little section of the story was meh for me. but I loved the feminist retellings.

This was not for me. I could not get into the story felt like it was all over the place. I am not one who really cares for retellings. I am not the target person for this one.

Lilith
by Nikki Marmery
Fiction Religion Mythology
NetGalley ARC
Publication Date: October 10, 2023
Alcove Press
Ages: 18+

A feminist retelling of Lilith, Adam's first wife.

This book is compared with the novel by Madeline Miller, and I agree with that comparison. I read the first 16% and then started to skim because it was boring, just like Miller's book.

While it was an interesting concept; Lilith is really a good person, and God actually has a female partner, but God and Adam are men and they have to control and what they can't control they abuse/lie about, and the things in the 'bible' weren't all true, women were intended to be equals but men... etc, etc...

But the story had no depth, as if written for middle/high school textbooks, with just enough detail so it could possibly keep kids' attention for more than five minutes.

I was expecting more details, more life to this character because she was supposed to be the first woman, powerful, but she and everyone else were all flat. Maybe if the author didn't rely so heavily on biblical references, they could have created a much more admirable character that women could believe in and start a real change in the controlling male dominated religions.

1 Star

Lilith, the legendary first wife if Adam, leaves the garden of Eden. From that moment, she makes it her mission to restore balance to the world, to overthrow the hierarchal and misogynistic religion of the Judeo-Christian Yahweh.

For someone raised as a Christian who became a mythology geek, this is close to the perfect book. We follow Lilith into the surrounding Mesopotamian world, where we encounter a multitude of gos and goddesses competing with the jealous Yahweh. Through the myth of the flood to Jezebel to Jesus and Mary Magdalene, key moments in the Judeo-Christian mythos are revisited through the experiences of Lilith. At every turn, we see how women and the feminine was suppressed. How a way of being that involved cooperation—rather than domination—was nearly lost to us, preserved in secret by the descendants of Lilith.

I can recommend this book for anyone who loves mythology and is interested in a convincing take on how things could have been different of Adam was not allowed to set himself over his wives.

The writing was excellent on each page. Along with Lilith and the other biblical women, I wept, sobbed, and cried out in anger as their tales were portrayed through a fresh perspective. Viewed through the eyes of a woman who is understanding of them rather than a man who is in charge.

I didn't even know certain parts of myself were there, much less broken, but this book healed them. After reading this book, I feel more complete than I have in all the years I've studied the Bible.

In exchange for my honest evaluation, I am grateful to Netgalley and Alcove Press for the digital galley.

As much as I wanted to enjoy this, I simply could not get into it. The pacing was awkward, which makes sense considering the timespan but was in need of some cuts. There were elements that could have been compelling, especially near the end, but weren't fleshed out nearly enough while other elements dragged on.
The takes on feminism lacked nuance, making everything feel incredibly black and white. Basically every single man was irredeemably evil, and Lilith is a perfect human being, even though she stood by and did nothing for a good portion of the story. Additionally, the final take seems to be that the end goal in life, and the way to immortality and happiness, is through having children, which I personally did not love.
The history was very well researched from what I could gather, but the execution was not for me.

A triumphant feminist retelling of the oft-maligned Lilith, Nikki Marmery's novel is a masterpiece in myth retelling. Written in a conversational style, the novel follows Lilith's fall from Paradise and her quest for revenge with matter-of-fact precision.

A telling story of human nature, Lilith's quest brings her into contact -- and conflict -- with other big-names in the Biblical world, like Noah and his wife Norea, Queen Jezebel, and Mary Magdalene.

When I say I could hardly put this book down, I mean it. I was reading it on the plane to a friend's bachelorette party weekend and used every moment of downtime to get through a few more pages. It was that intriguing!

Amazing biblical historical fiction about Lilith, the lesser-known first wife of Adam. Condemned as a demon in biblical history, superseded and overshadowed by Eve, Lilith was actually the first woman, a child of Yahweh and Asherah. She was conceived as an equal to Adam, molded from the same clay. She was also the first self-proclaimed proponent of women's equality. Her refusal to submit to being inferior to Adam led to her banishment from the Garden of Eden. The story beautifully follows her immortal journey through the ages as her descendants rise and strive time and again to establish women's rights and position as equal to men. I loved the retelling of Lilith and her descendants. An absolutely unputdownable read!!

Thank you Netgalley, Alcove Press, and Nikki Marmery for the ARC.

Marmery brings Adam’s first wife Lilith to light in this new novel. Following the larger women of mythology trend so popular as of late, Lilith brings a new mythology to the conversation, twisting some of the more well-known stories of Christianity to emphasize the female perspective. Marmery’s language creates a strange world where many faiths exist, layered upon each other, and force these beings and their creations to interact with each other. Marmery’s world fits with the larger literary trend she seeks to join, and her characters, particularly Lilith, experience a vast spectrum of emotions on their own quests for knowledge, revenge, and justice. Marmery’s characters drive the stories forward, and the flaws of these characters make them more personable and interesting in their challenging of established myths and stories. Seeing events from Lilith’s perspective, while limited, add another depth to readers’ understandings of these stories. Overall, Marmery’s new story expands the mythology retelling trend in current fiction and historical fiction literature in a new and exciting way.

I enjoyed the story but the tone felt like a false archaic language and at times it was distracting. The lessons and analysis of the evils of man were thoughtfully examined, but there were times it dragged.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Brought to life in the Garden of Eden, Lilith is the daughter of Asherah, and Yahweh. When Adam begins to dominate her, Lilith refuses, and is cast out. Searching for Asherah, she realizes that she is missing and Yahweh is behind her disappearance. When Lilith realizes that Eve has been created as Adam's helpmeet, she tries to speak to her, and shows her the Tree of Knowledge. Granted immortality, Lilith move through history, seeking Asherah and finding ways to restore balance and regain Paradise.

I could not put this book down. It was well written, and the character development was master level. I enjoyed the author's interpretations of biblical history and loved how she weaved Lilith throughout. I can't recommend this book enough. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Oof. I made it to 58% in this book, and then I had to DNF. For me personally, mythology retellings only work when I can form a strong connection with the characters, and I found that aspect to be entirely lacking in Lilith. The story reads essentially like, "and then she did this, and then she saw that, and then she said this, and then she did that," which is a whole lot of recitation of facts and random bits of scenery. I didn't feel any emotion for events that should have been EXTREMELY emotional, and my detachment is ultimately what caused me to DNF the book.

Lilith is a feminist retelling of some of the more famous Bible stories - Adam and Eve (and Lilith who was Adam’s first wife), Noah’s ark (with a focus on his wife and children), Jezebel (a story I knew nothing about), and Mary Magdalene. The basis of this book is that were two equal gods at the beginning, a god and a goddess and the god turned on the goddess, breaking his promise of equality with the consequence of the lost goddess being the degradation, demotion and subjugation of all human women. This is evident in how women are treated throughout history - they were worn down and often died through multiple pregnancies, used as prizes in war and collateral in peacetime through marriage, and thrown aside by men who feared them by simply being called a whore. All of these stories are told through this lens. By the way, I use past tense here but that is only because the story takes place in the past.

While this book was sometimes a bit slow I really did enjoy what the author was trying to accomplish. My 20-year old self would have loved this book (I went to every Lilith Fair concert I could from 1997-1999 - just showing my age). It shows some of the innate sexism in the Judeo-Christian tradition that I have always personally struggled with and is part of the reason I am culturally Jewish than religiously so. This book is probably not for conservative religious people, but I certainly appreciated the non-traditional views. Some parts certainly read faster than others, it’s an interesting take if you are open to it.
3.75 stars rounded to 4

Thank you Netgalley and Alcove Press for the chance to review

I'm a bit unsure what to say about Lilith. This is a retelling of the story of the first woman Lilith, who was banished from the garden of Eden for disobeying Adam.

The prose feels stunted, making the book feel repetitive even though the plot changes quite a bit throughout. I did enjoy the love story within, but it just wasn't enough for me. I think the message is a bit confused too. While I appreciate much of it, it reads a bit like someone's first try at feminism. The publisher refers to it as ambitious, and it certainly is. I do think that fans of Madeline Miller may enjoy this, but it just wasn't for me.

3.5 stars -- I couldn't request an advanced copy of Lilith fast enough. I was so excited to get my hands on this modern retelling of a woman who has been essentially ignored for far too long.

The finished result was -- not as strong as I had hoped. Lilith never felt like the main character of this retelling in a way I desperately wanted her to be. Throughout her centuries of travel and efforts to rewrite the narrative, she found and followed many important women, and I was happy their stories were included in this book. But this resulted in Lilith feeling more like a passive narrator than an active participant in the journey. Her voice still felt stunted in a way that I wish it didn't. Because this element was missing, it felt like a lot of the story dragged on without that clear purpose. Ultimately still well done and an important addition to this genre, but definitely not amongst my favorites.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

"Lilith" follows Lilith from the beginning in the Garden of Eden all the way through to the present day. Throughout the book, we follow Lilith as she sets out on her mission to spread her wisdom and avenge Asherah. On her journey, we see her meet and interact with different women like Eve, Jezebel, and Mary Magdalene.

The writing was very pretty and poetic. I found the feminist perspective that this book had interesting. I also liked seeing how Lilith would play a part in the stories of these notable women from the Bible. At the same time, there were times when I felt like I was just spectator to everything that was happening instead of going on the journey with her. I also felt like this book took a more Christian perspective in terms of how certain things were portrayed.