As usual, Hannah Lynn delivers!

Demeter is the WORST. Like, just under Zeus in my ranking of which God/Goddess is the worst. But this retelling actually really made me feel sorry for her, at least for a bit. Why? Well....because Zeus is the worst. When reading Greek mythology, it's a pretty safe to assume that if something tragic happened to a character, there's an 80% chance Zeus is the reason why. Unfortunately, Demeter is no different--all of her struggle and loss results from her brother, and all she ever wanted was to be left alone in peace.

Similar to her other works, Hannah Lynn's prose is absolutely beautiful. The descriptions of the scenery, the emotions of the characters, the inner monologues--all are absolutely beautifully written and I'm a huge fan of her writing style. It works particularly well for the stories she tells, and I think this may have been my favorite of hers in terms of writing.

I've read just about Hades/Persephone retelling known to man, and it was really refreshing to get the backstory to Demeter and why she became the monster she was when it comes to defending Persephone. I still think she's awful, but the insight into her that the author provides gives a whole new layer to the myth that folks who aren't familiar with the source material may not know.

This book is incredibly emotional, and touches on a lot of tough subjects (sexual assault, abuse, death of loved ones, etc), so be prepared to be in your feelings for this one. Athena's Child may still be my favorite, but this is a close second. I loved this one SO much and will continue to read anything Hannah writes.

If you're a fan of Jennifer Saint or Natalie Haynes, you'll LOVE these books!

Thank you SO much to Netgalley and Sourcebooks for the oppotunity to read this ahead of publication! I'm already on the edge of my seat for the next one.

Daughters of Olympus is a fantastic adaptation of the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone. The plot is wonderfully crafted, showcasing a women’s perspective. As the story progresses, you observe the influence of a mother’s love, the sorrow of heartbreak, and the commitment to staying loyal to one’s beliefs. This one is a must-read for fans of Greek mythology and retellings!

Thank you Net Galley and sourcebooks Landmark for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Daughters of Olympus is a Persephone (core) and Hades retailing with a twist. It starts by giving us the story of Demeter, which I will be honestly I have never read before. I felt that having the background on Demeter in the beginning helped to better understand Demeter's feeling and actions when it switched to Persephone's POV.

This is the 4th Greek retailing that I have read by Hannah M. Lynn, I have found them all to be well written, easy to follow and that they present the tale in a way that feels fresh and new!

If there is one thing this book has made clear, it's that I need to read more books by Hannah Lynn! In short: Daughters of Olympus is a story about freedom and choice where we get a strong queer Persephone and a Hades that made my heart melt. I'm here for it!

Longer review:

I'm a sucker for Greek mythology and Persephone and Hades are definitely one of my favorites to read about. Especially the less gruesome and more romanticized versions of their story, and I can now add Daughters of Olympus to that list. While this book is focused on Demeter and Core/Persephone, Lynn throws in many mentions of other Greek mythology characters and I thoroughly enjoyed this as well.

Daughters of Olympus is split into three parts. First, we get a little background on the goddess Demeter and I was immediately sucked into the story. Lynn's writing is simply amazing without being complicated. After seeing Demeter's POV, we get a part focused on Core's POV. As someone who is fond of this specific goddess, I loved Lynn's retelling of her life story. Then the story concludes with Persephone's part a.k.a. Core transformed into a badass goddess. I honestly loved everything about this book; from the mother-daughter relationship between Demeter and Core/Persephone to the sapphic love story between Core and Ione to the complicated relation between Persephone and Hades. If I had to give one comment, it would be that I wished the part of Persephone was longer. I would've loved to see more of Hades and Persephone together. I'm very curious how Lynn would write a longer story about them in this setting.

This is a book that explores the relationship between the Greek goddess Demeter and her daughter Core/Persephone and how the whole legend of their story came to be. I have always loved exploring mythology and that's why I snagged this one.

I think the author did explore and flush out her version of Demeter well. I liked the way Hades and Persephone's relationship was created. I think it captured the chaos that is everything related to Greek mythology and all the nuances. And she stayed true to the mythology, filling the book many mentions of rape and sex between the gods/goddesses and mortals--we know that's what makes up most of births of the various demigods and such anyways.

The thing that I didn't personally care for was the lesbian relationship that Persephone had with Ione. It was very very very heavy in the book and basically drove a good portion of the book. I chose to skip reading many pages referring to it because that's my personal preference. I had to skip a lot.

Again--same sex relationships makes up tons of Greek mythology--I just don't care to read it in detail.

2 stars because it just wasn't for me. It has nothing to do with the authors writing skills. But I disliked more than liked this book.

*I received a complimentary copy of the ARC from the publisher and netGAlley. I wasn't required to write a positive review and all opinions are 100% my own.

A deeply moving retelling of one of the most well known Greek myths through the eyes of the women who were most affected by the events.

We all know the story of Hades and Persephone, at this point it's been told and retold a thousand times with just about every spin you can imagine. But we don't always get the whole story. One extremely important point of view is often left out. That of Persephone's mother, Demeter.

Hannah Lynn takes us on the full journey - from the moment of Demeter's release from Kronos's belly until Persephone is returned to the land of the living. Every gritty detail, every little moment that makes Demeter and Persephone who they are is explored in detail and woven into a single cohesive tale of love, loss, pain, strife, and coming into one's own. We watch as Demeter is time and again victimized by Zeus. The defining moments of her character laid out bare for us to observe and understand just who she was by the time Hades steals Persephone away.

We see how those events also affected Persephone. How her Mother's trials and the actions of the other gods left her stranded and imprisoned in a veritable paradise, a cage without walls. How she was held captive by Demeter's grief and fear as much as she would later be by Hades' kidnapping her to the underworld.

I never found myself wanting for more while I read. If anything I found myself more and more intrigued with every passage. There are so many aspects to this story that I didn't remember from literature class in the past. I loved the inclusion of even the smallest myths and details. Any creative license taken in this retelling felt natural and only enhanced the tale further. I especially enjoyed the way Ms. Lynn was able to elicit emotion in me as I read. I felt Demeter's horror as she was violated at the hands of Zeus and later Poseidon. I felt her grief over the loss of Iaison, her rage. Over all, I think this was just brilliantly done.

I would absolutely recommend this book to others who enjoy Greek mythology and retellings. I look forward to reading more from Ms. Lynn.

I absolutely loved this book. It was everything I could have wanted and i can't wait to have a physical copy in my hands and on my shelf. And the part of kore being Sapphic with Ione and being her life altering heart break incredible. The dual poverty of the mother and daughter and how differently they saw the same situation fantastic.

Typically, when I read Persephone in a book blurb, that is all I need to see and I’m in. But in a niche that is becoming ever more saturated, it is more and more difficult to find a book that does something different with the story. To me, Daughters of Olympus does just that in a number of ways.

Firstly, the book is not only Persephone’s story but also Demeter’s. Without specifically counting pages, I’m almost positive more than half, maybe as much as two thirds of the novel is told from Demeter’s point of view, beginning well before Persephone is ever born.

This positioning of this narrative feels like a throwback to the classical Homeric Hymn to Demeter, in which the importance of the tale lies not in Persephone’s abduction, but in Demeter’s reactions and actions as a result of it.

This is not to say that Persephone is a background character at all. Her narration begins with and focuses on how she loves her mother, but sees her actions and choices in a very different light. We as readers are given the opportunity to decide who, if anyone, we believe is in the right.

So many more traditional tellings essentially begin with the abduction as if Persephone had no life, agency, or experiences beforehand. I won’t go into detail, but this Persephone has had a full life’s measure of sorrow and joy before she ever sets foot in the Underworld.

This is a story of women. Of feminine rage. Of grief. Of joy. While the actions of men do spur the plot in places, it is never their story. Even the men who are depicted as paragons, or at the very least, above some of the failings of their sex, they are left undeveloped, as if their place in the story is only to facilitate the advancement of the story of the women.

In this way, the story feels both old and new. Reading it in places feels almost like you’re reading an original classical source. But the actual focus, and its treatment of women is definitely modern.

I think it speaks to the focus of the novel that I’ve written this much without once mentioning Hades. While he is certainly present, this is not his story, and the abduction does not occur until more than halfway through the novel.

Ultimately we all know how and where this story ends, but it is definitely an unexpected journey in how we get there. This novel shows how not one of the players is infallible or without fault, and the ultimate solution (again playing out exactly as we suspect) doesn’t feel so much like a compromise that no one is happy with, but actually a solution that forces everyone to improve upon their faults.

Very much a read worth your time.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for the early read.

Honestly anything that has to do with Greek mythology I’ll pick up and read. So this was an auto grab for me. This is definitely a fantastic book for people wanting to get into Greek mythology and a nice refresher for someone who is into it.

It’s lovely having a female writer in the Greek myth world where it’s mostly written by men. Hannah Lynn continues to do a great job with Greek stories.

If you loved The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec or Daughters of Sparta by Claire Haywood, this is the book for you. Hannah Lynn did a wonderful job telling the stories of Demeter and Core (Persephone) in a way I wasn't expecting. This novels delves into the relationships between mothers and daughters and isn't afraid to confront issues like sexual assault and grief (both rife within Greek mythology). It would've been so easy for Lynn to gloss over the difficult topics, but it wouldn't have been Demeter and Persephone's story if she had.

At times the story felt slow at times, but I enjoyed the way Lynn showed the passage of time for her immortal characters.

Trigger warning: incest, rape, infanticide, murder, abduction

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

Gorgeous writing and a new view on the classic mythology we all know. Just beautiful and would fully recommend for anyone interested in Greek mythology!

I've read many Hades-Persephone retellings that minimize the connections between female characters in favour of the romance between Persephone and Hades and demonize Persephone's mother for getting in the way, so I appreciated the more sympathetic portrayal of Demeter here and more nuanced exploration of her and Persephone's relationship than one usually gets in such stories. That said, I must admit that Demeter's character didn't really work for me, much as I sympathised with her, given how much of her behaviour stemmed from the death of a man she had known for less than a day (and this coming from a woman who had previously lost a son!). I did not find her connection with Iasion believable and the major impact he had on her life even less. Had they known each other for longer, had they gotten the chance to have a proper relationship, his death would have felt more impactful for the reader and Demeter's subsequent depression and self-isolation would have been more believable.
As for Persephone, I enjoyed her part of the story more than Demeter's, much to my surprise. I did like that she had a romantic relationship prior to her marriage, but I'm not quite sure I liked the way how in the end said relationship was pushed out of the way in order to make room for Persephone's (heterosexual) romance with the man who kidnapped her. I also keep waiting for a retelling in which Persephone takes power over the Underworld herself without needing to be given everything on a silver platter by her husband, but I guess the latter option wouldn't be so frequently used if it didn't appeal to many readers.

Thank you NetGalley for giving me an eARC of this book! I really wanted to enjoy this book as I’d read Athena’s Child by this author and was looking forward to a Greek historical fiction that was much longer, but ultimately I found myself being severely underwhelmed by Daughters of Olympus and so I’m giving it 2 out of 5 stars.

The pacing of this book was quite slow and like some others have mentioned in their reviews on Goodreads, I also felt like things kept repeating too much for my own liking. Demeter’s story was quite repetitive and very slow (and sad, but it wouldn’t be Greek fiction without grief and tragedy) and when we did eventually get to Persephone’s story (Core at the time), her story repeated much of what we’d already read and experienced with Demeter before we started to get Persephone’s own individual story. When she did finally end up in the Underworld, much of Persephone’s story was rushed, especially the building of her relationship with Hades and the ending was so very rushed when things started to get properly interesting that it really threw me off, especially when things could have been much more further explored and developed.

Overall, the story was decent and very much upheld the Greek tragedy’s that Greek mythology is known for, I was just hoping for a story with a little bit better pacing and a less repetitive story. Thank you again NetGalley!

The Daughters of Olympus retells the myth of Demeter and Persephone. It is a profound look at maternal love, the desire for independence, and loss. The book follows two POVs of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. Demeter embraces the world with joy until a devastating assault leaves her fearful and withdrawn. She only finds comfort in her daughter, Persephone, and is overly protective, sheltering them from the world.
Persephone secretly ventures into the mortal realm, yearning for freedom and adventure, which catches the attention of Hades, who kidnaps her and forces her into a role she never wanted. Demeter's grief and anger over her daughter's abduction drive her to drastic measures. The book explores how far a mother will go to protect her child, the destruction love can cause to all involved, and how life's traumatic experiences can empower us and lead to significant transformations.

The author successfully executes emotional depth by adding complexity to the characters and their relationship. Their writing humanizes divine characters, making their emotions and motivations relatable. You can feel the pain, anguish., loss, and love. It is a new take on a timeless myth. If you like mythological retellings and character-driven stories, this book is for you.

I received an ARC ebook copy from Netgalley and Sourcebooks in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank your NetGalley for my copy of Daughters of Olympus by Hannah Lynn.
The genres for this book are listed under mythology, fantasy, retelling,historical fiction, and romance.
I was super nervous reading this book after the horrible ending in the Amazons of Themiscyra but I’m glad I did.
My love for a good hades and Persephone retelling is just as strong as my King Arthur retelling. Maybe more so.
What I loved most about this book is the fact we get to see a whole new side of Demeter. The first part of the book is her side of the story, seeing what she had to go through with Zeus and Poseidon and how Core (persephone) came to be and how she’d do anything for her daughter.
Then it switched to Persephones point of view and her getting abducted by Hades and the author just gives it a whole new vibe. Shows us that Hades isn’t really the bad guy in the story.
I think everyone should give this book a chance, especially if you were hesitating after reading any of her previous works.
I’d give this a 3.5 stars.

I want to start off with a trigger warning for r*pe and SA. Because, though it is known that Greek mythology is ripe with these aspects of the god’s tales, readers need to be aware that this story does not hesitate to stay true to those stories.

Hannah Lynn does it once again with her retelling of Demeter and Persephone’s stories in Daughters of Olympus. She captures the raw emotions of her characters and does a fantastic job contrasting mother and daughter. The way she intertwined all the little pieces of Greek mythology that cross both goddesses paths was so well done. Lynn made me fall in love with Hades, and not in the typical morally grey or comedic portrayal we often see. The depth of Demeter’s love, loss, grief, and pain was poignant and unabashed. The growth of both characters was so admirable. I would say that this is Lynn’s best story yet in the Grecian Women series!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of Daughters of Olympus in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked this! It was my favorite retelling that incorporated Persephone X Hades but it was really the story of Demeter. I was shocked at how little I knew about Demeter's story after reading so many Persephone retellings. And what a sad story it was... The author explored a lot of heartbreaking topics with care and accuracy including Demeter's grief after Iasion and her multiple SA's, family TRAUMA, how she wanted to protect her daughter from what she went through but just ended up keeping her caged in, Core being stolen, the loss of her nymphs and her home. Persephone had fantastic character growth. It was so cool to see her gain freedom in increments, fall in love, grow in her powers, and become a queen. On top of all of that, I want to comment on how I think this book will have the power to resonate with a large audience. I think just about every woman who reads this book will be able to relate to Demeter and Core and can draw strength from their experiences.

There were only 2 things keeping me from rating this 5 stars. First, the pacing did feel a little off. A lot of this book had a very meandering tone and then it all felt rushed at the end. I wanted to learn more about the Underworld and see Persephone and Hades relationship grow more. The descriptions of the Underworld were vivid and imaginative and I wanted more of that. But, I also understand that this was really a book of Demeter and her daughter not Persephone and Hades. Second, the relationship between Demeter and Iasion didn't feel believable enough to cause centuries of grief. Their meeting was such a small chunk of the book but then her grieving was the rest of the book. I think another chapter on their relationship before his death would have helped.

Overall, I gave this book 4 stars. This was my favorite Hannah Lynn book so far and an improvement from Queens of Themiscyra . The only book I have left is Athena's Child and I'm very excited to get to it soon!

I find Greek Mythology fascinating and love a retelling so I knew this was going to be a book I enjoyed. I haven’t seen too many retellings centred around Demeter so it’s was great to explore a fresh take on the Gods. As to be expected, Greek Mythology is bloody and brutal and this one was no exception. The trauma Demeter experienced was horrendous. Seeing her transition from victim to survivor was really well done but I did find her sections of the book a little slow. I loved Core’s story, her zest for life, adventures spirit and strength of character was beautiful. I really enjoyed Hade as a character. I would love to read a book by Hannah from his perspective. Overall a wonderful retelling, would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys the Greek Gods and is interested in a retelling with a new perspective.

Daughters Of Olympus by Hannah M. Lynn is a Hades and Persephone (Core) retelling. What makes it unique to most other retellings is that it brings in the perspective of Persephone's mother, Demeter, as well as the story of her lover, Ione. This adds so much to the story.

I love Hannah M. Lynn's books and this one is no different! Check it out!

Thank you, NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Landmark for an advanced readers copy of Daughters of Olympus by Hannah M. Lynn. I was super excited to read it and I already told my mythology book friends to add it to their lists!

Demeter has always intrigued me and this book was a great read to sate my curiosity. Again, Hannah Lynn's writing was a bit slow at times and I had to take frequent breaks.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to review this book. All opinions are my own.