This book took me quite a while to read, so sorry for the late turn around. I received this as an ARC from Netgalley and while I was excited to get into my mythology girl era, I will say this was a pretty hard book to take in. As we know Greek names and stories are often hard to keep track of. I was doing quite a lot of mental gymnastics to remember names and what I learned from High School lit classes. It was interesting how it was in the all knowing first person "Aphrodite", but considering she is the Goddess of love and passion, most of her comments were rather horny. It was almost to aggressive when she's in the middle of telling a story then zeros in on the persons sexual history. It all just felt a bit too much. I don't plan to read anymore from this series, but for Greek mythology girlies you might really enjoy this book!

North has managed to give Penelope and her ladies a beautiful and vivid retelling in Ithaca, and now in House of Odysseus. Much as I love these books and the audiobook versions, I'm dreading the conclusion of Penelope's story since we all know what will happen to her ladies. Forward to The Last Song of Penelope.

While I adored Ithaca, House of Odysseus fell a bit short for me. I am continually impressed by Claire North's stunning writing, however this series feels slow when stretched into a trilogy. Overall, I enjoyed this, I just found issues with the pacing.
Thank you to NetGalley and RedHook books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

This book really just took me for a ride. I loved the build up, the character development, and the writing. I would definitely read more from this author!

House of Odysseus gives you more of the mythology that is usually not covered by traditional means unless you go out of your way to learn about it. This part of the story after Clytemnestra is murdered juggles both her story as well as intertwining the stories of Elekra, Orestes, Helen and Penelope. It feels as if you are getting a kind of behind the scenes peak at the original myth. Thoroughly enjoyed.

“Menelaus stares at his wife, her wide dark eyes, and for a moment she holds his gaze, then looks away and giggles. It is the tiniest, smallest sound. She puts her fingers to her lips, as if astonished to have heard it, as if she might be able to press the noise back past those lovely pearl teeth of hers. "What are you doing?" he asks. She doesn't answer. He passes his cup to a servant, leans a little closer. "What are you doing?" His voice is a low hiss, a rattle of ashes over a cold fire, but seems to carry across the room. "Are you trying to be stupid?"”

A dude who could say above deserved everything that happened to him, right? After all, he thought women could not be his match, not now, not ever. But you know we won’t die before we see things happening to us that we thought would never happen. Just like Penelope happened to Menelaus.

I always rooted for Penelope. She was the less talked about cousin but I think she had the most brains. She wasn’t into grand ideas. She wanted to be the queen in her husband’s kingdom but also be his equal in respect she got. I think her people understood her value and her role in Odysseus’ absence. Only if Menelaus could go back to where he came from

I enjoyed this unique read. I love that the classics are getting a fresh retelling. This is my first time reading the author but plan to read more and excited to see that there are more books.

This retelling of Homer’s Odyssey is an incredible, intelligent, brilliant, and fascinating work of historical fiction. Set on Ithaca, readers learn that there is much more happening in Ithaca under Penelope’s roof than it appears, with warrior women hidden across the kingdom, mysterious poisonings occuring abroad, gods and goddesses walking amongst the mortals, and much more. Things become more complicated for Penelope when her infamous cousin Clytemnestra’s children Elektra and Orestes, suffering from a strange illness, arrive unexpectedly, and their visit is thrown into chaos when Menelaus arrives with Helen, Penelope’s other infamous cousin, for a visit. Despite these many complications and the strain on her resources, Penelope proves that she was much more than the patient wife waiting in Ithaca for Odysseus’ return. The characters are the star of the show, and the alternating perspectives from various women to Penelope, Athena, and Aphrodite, are incredibly detailed and handled very well; North does not shy away from the crude or realistic elements of ancient Greece and handles the crassness of men like Menelaus and Laertes well. There are many forces at work in this novel, and North does an excellent job of weaving these several narrative strands together without giving them away.

This retelling of Homer’s Odyssey is an incredible, intelligent, brilliant, and fascinating work of historical fiction. Set on Ithaca, readers learn that there is much more happening in Ithaca under Penelope’s roof than it appears, with warrior women hidden across the kingdom, mysterious poisonings occuring abroad, gods and goddesses walking amongst the mortals, and much more. Things become more complicated for Penelope when her infamous cousin Clytemnestra’s children Elektra and Orestes, suffering from a strange illness, arrive unexpectedly, and their visit is thrown into chaos when Menelaus arrives with Helen, Penelope’s other infamous cousin, for a visit. Despite these many complications and the strain on her resources, Penelope proves that she was much more than the patient wife waiting in Ithaca for Odysseus’ return. The characters are the star of the show, and the alternating perspectives from various women to Penelope, Athena, and Aphrodite, are incredibly detailed and handled very well; North does not shy away from the crude or realistic elements of ancient Greece and handles the crassness of men like Menelaus and Laertes well. There are many forces at work in this novel, and North does an excellent job of weaving these several narrative strands together without giving them away.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Redhook Books for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really love mythology retellings, and Claire North is great at these. Greek Mythology with murder mystery, sisterhood, sarcasm, found family, and amazing women? YES PLEASE. Highly recommend any of Claire's novels.

In this story, we get the female perspective of the tale of Odysseus. Penelope, Electra and some other key women tell this tale and demonstrate how women had few choices and were used as pawns.

𝑵𝒐𝒘 𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒎𝒆.

THE ODYSSEY is my favorite story of all time, and I devour any re-telling or new translation of it. HOUSE OF ODYSSEUS was entertaining, but it moved very slow and was quite verbose in places. Of course I know that a lot of liberties are taken with re-tellings, but having Penelope play detective in a murder mystery was a little strange, and how the author imagined her character was a little on the crude side. I have always imagined Penelope as the epitome of grace and dignity.

With that being said, this was still an enjoyable second installment in the trilogy, and I look forward to how the author plans on ending things with THE LAST SONG OF PENELOPE. Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook Books for this copy. This book is available now.

Rating: 3.5

As “House of Odysseus” Is the second book in a series, I grabbed a copy of the first book, “Ithaca,” to read and be introduced to the world. As someone who’s loved Greek mythology for over 20 years, I was very excited to start reading these. While “Ithaca” was told from the perspective of Hera, “House of Odysseus” is narrated by Aphrodite. I think I really enjoyed Hera telling the story in the first book as she seemed more animated and involved that Aphrodite. I can’t wait to read the final book in the series as I simply love Penelope! She creates a facade of being meek when she’s really a brilliant mastermind. Overall, while I enjoyed “House of Odysseus,” particularly the last 70%-90%, I have to say “Ithaca” was my favorite out of the two.

This is a better book than the first one.

The pacing is perfect, with Penelope trying to placate Menelaus without showing Orestes being driven insane by his guilt. Menelaus is a fearsome antagonist. He’s an uber-masculine king whose win in a vicious war added to his masculine ego. He has the power and distaste of women to ruin Penelope. Aphrodite is a fun narrator who gives an interesting perspective on things.

This review is based on an advanced reader copy provided through Netgalley for an honest review.

This is my second Claire North book after reading Ithaca, and I enjoyed it quite a bit! Usually, I go into these stories looking for a retelling, but that was not what this book brought to the table. I enjoyed getting read more about Penelope, but I felt like I wasn't as sucked in as I was with Ithaca. I think I'd like to reread both books back-to-back!

In Ancient Greek mythology the gods are always messing with the humans by becoming involved in their lives and using them as pawns in their games and in this book Aphrodite is our narrator and resident pit stirrer. The story of Penelope, and her husband Odysseus, had been told for thousands of years but never quite like this. We see Penelope as the powerful and cunning woman she is….not just Odysseus’ wife. She struggle to find and keep her own power in a world run by men and we the reader root for her every step of the way!

I don't know about this one. There is no doubt that Claire North is a well written author. But for some reason at 70%, I just put it down. All plans were rolling into action, and I stopped. I just recently finished the book, and it was great. I've grown to love getting the story told by a third-party God.

A riveting reimagining featuring Penelope, wife of Odysseus. Beautifully written with a slowly building narrative that really takes off about 1/4 through the novel. Narrated by Aphrodite, riddled with action, political intrigue, and strong female characters. Overall a dazzling read

This one was more of the authors imagining of what happened rather than a story rooted in Greek mythology, I didn’t love it because it was simply a work of fiction rather than a reimagining

This book just wasn’t for me. I usually love mythology adaptation stories, but this one dragged so much for me. I felt like the first half was so hard to get through. I enjoyed the story in the second half, but I just felt like the intense details were sometimes a little too much. Also in the first half I felt like as new characters were introduced there were long tangents about each character that I didn’t enjoy very much. I just didn’t love this book, but the story in the second half was fairly well done and this is an interesting take on this