This is a beautifully written story of Thelia, handmaiden to Prosperina (Persephone). Thelia feels she has betrayed her goddess/first love when Prosperina is kidnapped and taken to the Underworld. Her mother punishes Thelia and her sisters by banishing them to the island of Scopuli, where they are turned into the sirens and must use their monstrous gifts in order to survive.
After deciphering Prosperina's signs, Thelia is made human again and sails for the Americans, landing among the Roanoke Colony. She is sent to bring men back to Scopuli, to sacrifice to her goddess so that she may free her sisters and herself.
Told in dual POVs, before coming to Roanoke and while there, Thelia must learn to once again maneuver the treachery of men and make sure she saves her sisters and herself.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine for this digital e-arc.*

4.5 stars. This is a powerful read about female rage and forgiveness.

Dual timelines can be tricky but it’s done well here, exploring the sirens of Ancient Rome as one leaves their exile to end up in the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Thelia’s story in Roanoke is depicted as just as brutal if not more so than her time in exile. And while it could’ve very easily made the statement that men = bad, it touches on the idea that bad people are made and not born.

Thank you to NetGalley, Shannon Ives, and Dell Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was excited to receive this as an ARC! Overall, this had some interesting elements but was not my cup of tea.

The content warning was WILD. I have not read a book with ritualistic sacrifice and cannibalism before, so this was a first! This led to intense imagery: sirens luring sailors to their death, gore, domestic and sexual violence against women.

This is sapphic Greco-Roman mythology combined with an imagined explanation for the disappearance of the lost colony of Roanoke. If it sounds like a lot, IT IS.

We are shown several references of women solely being sexual objects to men: "looking like a monster but still being human between the legs". The word " flower" was also used to reference both love and hate, which was clever.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC of “Those Fatal Flowers”.

As a North Carolinian, if I hear the words “The Lost Colony”, I’m immediately locked in. Interweaving the legend with Greek mythology AND queer representation was something I never saw coming, and I was really worried that this book was not going to make sense. Glad to say I was wrong!

Ives did a wonderful job making those two distinct historical periods come together and while it took me a few chapters to get into it and understand what was happening, it was worth it in the end!

Would I have ever expected Greek mythology to be combined with the Roanoke mystery?? No, but somehow these combinations + sapphic longing worked. Really enjoyed the split timelines between past, cursed Thelia and the "Lady" Thelia in Roanoke. My only unanswered question is I really wanted to know why Cora and Will looked so much like Thelia's past love.

The best part of this is the last 25ish%. I liked the combination of Grecco-Roman with the lost colony of Roanoke. Bringing these two pieces of history together was original and a really cool concept. But something about the story itself was off for me. I think it was the pacing. It did get better as the book went on though. This is definitely a book about feminine rage. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. This was a just okay read.

thank you NetGalley for the arc!

sapphic longing, feminist rage, greek mythology, and the roanoke colony.. a lot going on and the writing was quite pretty, but i just couldn’t really get into the story, honestly.

A rare miss from me. This tries too hard. Retelling myths is a popular genre lately but this one goes an additional step by throwing in the mystery of the lost Roanoke colony. It just didn't work for me. And, as others have noted this is missing a key element of the New World story-the indigenous people. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I DNF but I suspect there's an audience for this.

The writing was top notch. This book was interesting because its individual parts interested me but I think the execution was lacking. I enjoyed the alternating timelines though their connections could have been a bit tighter. I didn't really see the connection between each section-- but each were interesting.

The setting I did not care for. If a book is going to be using historical places during a period of time that is easily tracked-- excluding the people that actually lived there, glossing over their existence outside of detailing the horrors that happened to them does not sit well with me. For this reason I do think the story would have been plausible in any other location. I do understand why the location chosen would be desirable, however.

The relationships between the two main characters was very thin. If I wasn't aware of their backstory there was no reason for me to see why one of the characters would even give the other the time of day outside of proximity. It felt more like instant lust/longing. Speaking of those characters, the turn they make was jarring. It felt like the story dramatically came to a conclusion like a meal with no meat/protein, just sugar.

Thank you to Shannon Ives, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, and NetGalley for an eARC of Those Fatal Flowers!

2.5 out of 5 stars - rounded up to 3 stars.

I really enjoyed the premise of this book and thought combining Greco-Romany mythology with the lost colony of Roanoke was a very clever concept. For me, though, it fell a little flat. The book was really slow to start off because we had to get through world building for two separate time periods. Towards the middle things started to pick up but by that point I wasn't very invested in the story. Even then, bouncing back and forth from two time periods made everything seem dragged out and I found my attention wandering until the last 10% of the book.

I found the main character, Thelia, fairly unlikable. She was brave..... but also very whiny about it. I actually enjoyed learning about the side characters from the colony of Roanoke more that I enjoyed Thelia's story.

This may be the book for someone else, but although it had an interesting concept, it was not for me.

I feel like I can't rate this book as highly as I'd like to because the choice to set it in Roanoke and then not actually engage with the setting leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. It legitimately could be set in any other early colony in any other location and have the same effect, and instead we get a double erasure of the Croatan people, both in the story and in the history of the Roanoke "mystery". It also doesn't do itself any favors by making its antagonists just so unambiguously evil towards everyone, never actually confronting colonial mindsets and giving all the "good" characters fairly modern mindsets towards settler colonialism and land rights.

Anyway, this is a book full to the brim with female rage, particularly at men and society and how women get trapped in the endless cycles of being used, only broken when we actually look out for each other. Thelia gives as good as she gets, eventually, but there's a lot of heavy subject martial in between, particularly around sexual assault and miscarriages.

I'm also not sure how I feel about Cora looking so much like Proserpina when Thelia is still so hung up on her, only for it to be resolved with a "time to move on, I forgive you".

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House - Dell for sending me this ARC!

Wow, this is such an interesting concept for a book! It combines mythology with the story of the vanished Roanoke colony to create a completely unique tale. You must get through the first 15% or so where the story doesn’t make a lot of sense before it all starts to come together.

I will say, however, that this odd/unique combination of mythology and the Roanoke colony felt disjoined at times — the dual timeline aspect was helpful in clarifying parts (but definitely not all) of this disjoined-ness. I’m curious what assisted the author in coming up with such a combination?

And, if using the colonies and settlers as a main setting, it would make sense to focus on colonization, rather than skirting around it as this book did. As other reviews have stated, it’s a bit odd to use the colonies and call the men “treacherous”, yet not acknowledge the impacts of this on the indigenous people. I read the authors note where she details her reasonings for not including this, however I feel it should’ve been addressed at least a little more within the story. Not only is this important to address in general, it also would have added depth to the plot and an extra layer as to why Thelia focused on this group.

The story itself had potential, if only my above issues had been addressed, it could’ve been rated much higher. Perhaps a different setting without a background in genocide without addressing it?

2.5 stars

I had to DNF this at 20%

Unfortunately this style of writing just wasn't for me. I had a really hard time trying to get into this story because I personally just didn't connect with the prose. At about 20% I found myself doing a lot of skimming to try and get the story before deciding to throw in the towel and admit defeat.

There are people that are going to love this book, but unfortunately it just wasn't for me.

The myth of Hades and Persephone is my favorite, so, while I’m less keen on Roman mythology, I was intrigued by this one. Those Fatal Flowers isn’t exactly a Proserpina retelling, though Proserpina does feature somewhat. Instead, it takes a look at what the lives of Proserpina’s former handmaidens, who were turned into the Sirens, might have been like, and what might have happened if one managed to leave the island and come across the lost American Roanoke colony.

When Proserpina is kidnapped, Thelia and her two sisters are punished by being turned into monstrous Sirens doomed to use their voices to lure ships of men to their deaths, and sentenced to a life of exile on Scopuli. Centuries pass, and ships begin to dwindle, and Thelia and her sisters become desperate. When one last ship arrives, Thelia and her sisters, with the aid of Proserpina, manage to turn Thelia back into her godly form with the goal of finding more offerings to permanently return all three of them to their godly forms. She travels on the sea and eventually washes ashore, where she’s taken into the Roanoke colony and believed to be a princess. Men vie for her hand with promises of riches and security falling from Thelia’s lips, but a young woman who looks just like Proserpina catches Thelia’s eye. But her power hungry hosts have other plans for her, and her island.

Split between Now and Then, Those Fatal Flowers tells the story of Thelia both as a Siren and as a woman on the hunt for a big enough offering to Proserpina so she and her sisters can permanently resume their godly forms. I liked the way both timelines were twisted together, but it often made one or both feel like they were moving agonizingly slowly at various times. It took half the book for both timelines to really become interesting, so the first half came off as slow where nothing interesting was happening in either timeline. The setup was almost agonizingly long, and the pay off felt too little. I did enjoy the way this one ended, but it also felt almost anti-climatic and almost too easy and convenient.

Thelia wasn’t my favorite person. Unfortunately, the entirety of the story is told from her perspective. In the Then timeline, she spent most of the time obsessing over her love for Proserpina, tormenting herself with all the terrible things her goddess was probably suffering at Dis’ hands, and feeling guilty at being the one to point Dis in Proserpina’s direction. She sounded more like a love sick fool than a heroine, and I quickly tired of her. Her sisters, though, while little more than cardboard cutouts, were a little more interesting, doing their best to live with what they had and finding different pleasures. In the Now timeline, she’s fixated on Cora, who is betrothed to her hostess’s son in the colony, and, weirdly feels some tumult over the fate she’s dooming the men of the colony to by being there. She swings from being lovesick over Cora because she looks just like Proserpina to being bloodthirsty, so it made my head spin a little. It was impossible to pin her down, possibly because she didn’t even know who she was or what she wanted.

The romance was strange. So much of the story is painted to be a romance between Thelia and Cora, and yet most of their romance feels little more than imagined. Cora spends most of the story angry at Thelia for stealing away her betrothed or skittering away from Thelia because she’s feeling things for Thelia that she shouldn’t. Most of the time, they’re dancing around each other, and Cora seems to despise her. I suppose little separates love and hate, but it made the jump into romance in the second half feel a little like it came out of the blue. It only kind of made sense because Thelia spent so much of the Now timeline obsessing over Cora.

But Those Fatal Flowers did manage to deliver a few interesting bits. I did love that it remained true to the mythology. I liked that Proserpina never abandoned her faithful handmaidens, and I loved the glimpse into her as the wife of Dis. This also offered a possible explanation to what happened to the Roanoke colony. Of course, it’s quite convenient, but it worked well and I liked the way it was executed. It was fantastic to get the story of the Sirens and the life they might have been consigned to. It was brutal, making much of this novel brutal and bloody, and yet it was never gratuitous. After all, Proserpina becomes goddess of the dead. But it was sometimes a little too gory for me, so be warned.

Those Fatal Flowers and I didn’t really click. While there were a few things that I actually liked, most of the story bothered me. I didn’t feel the romance, but I did appreciate the vengeance Thelia took on men who would take advantage of women. I also grew tired rather quickly of Thelia, but some of the secondary characters were interesting, and I would have loved to see more of them. This was interesting in that it offered some interesting solutions to a mystery, and I liked that it crossed Roman mythology with history, but there were too many other problems that just rubbed me the wrong way.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

While the writing was strong, the combination of an extinct indigenous people's story with Greek mythology gave me an uncomfortable feeling. Although I believe the insensitivity was unintentional, it still casts a shadow over the narrative.

I do enjoy a well-executed dual-timeline story, which Shannon handles flawlessly. I also appreciate the sapphic love story. However, I was initially thrown off by the use of Roman names for Persephone and Hades (Prospernia and Dis). Although I eventually adjusted, it was a distraction for me at first.

Overall, it was a good story, once I navigated the uncomfortable aspects. I honestly feel that if the author believed she did not have the right to tell Indigenous stories, she should not have included them in her book and could have chosen a different approach.

Thank you Netgalley, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Dell, and Shannon Ives for the ARC of this book. I am voluntarily leaving my honest opinion.

I wasn’t sure where this story would take me at first. As usual, I went in blind, only reading the synopsis about 15% into the story. This was my first time diving into a historical fantasy with a romantic subplot and a hefty dose of feminine rage—seriously, a lot of rage. Initially, Thelia’s anger toward the male sex felt extreme, especially when it extended to small children. However, as the story unfolded, it became clear that her rage was justified, given the treatment she and the women around her endured at the hands of most men in the story (with one notable exception, Will).

The dual timelines added an intriguing layer to the narrative. One follows the sisters’ lives after being banished to Scopuli, while the other focuses on Thelia, who escapes and infiltrates the Roanoke colony disguised as royalty. The true purpose of her mission in Roanoke is revealed in the latter half of the book, which is when the story truly captivated me.

The author’s prose was beautiful—rich and evocative, drawing me into the world effortlessly. That said, the pacing could be uneven at times, particularly when it came to the passage of time, which made some transitions difficult to follow. Despite this, I appreciated Thelia’s character development and the poignant exploration of how monsters are made, not born.

I am deeply uncomfortable with the author's approach to the Indigenous characters in this book. Setting part of the book on Roanoke just to have Indigenous characters only really exist to basically provide set dressing and violence is absolutely unacceptable.

If you like: mythology, sapphics, yearning, and female rage, THOSE FATAL FLOWERS is the book for you. Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine for the advanced copy!

I do have mixed feelings about this book, but most of them are good! I love books connected to myths and legends, and Those Fatal Flowers is a combo of two wildly different ones-GrecoRoman attendants of a goddess' daughter are cursed into monstrous siren-like forms after the daughter is kidnapped by Dis (the Roman name of Hades, so obvs this is another side of the Persephone and Hades myth) AND the lost colony of Roanoke in the Americas.

For plenty of reasons, I really don't like reading about the colonists who came to America in fiction. And though I was almost meh about it here, I thought it was interestingly done. One of the aforementioned sirens has set off to find new people to bring to their island to kill, and honestly, who better than some white male colonizers who are awful to women and Indigenous peoples! This book packs in a ton of feminine rage, queer longing, and absolutely brutal scenes. There are quite a bit of content warnings (I believe found at the beginning of the book, so do check) and I would call a good deal of this book horrific.

I stayed entertained for the whole story, but the pacing was inconsistent. In both POVs, there were parts that dragged and parts that gave you whiplash. The ending was sorta conclusive, but then forgot about everyone but the main characters, which left me with a ton of questions.

Thanks to Dell and Netgalley for the e-ARC!

Those Fatal Flowers presents an intriguing premise, and I did enjoy the protagonist, Thelia. However, I struggled with the connection the author tried to make between an ancient Greek myth and the colonial settlement of Roanoke in North America. To me, this combination felt somewhat forced and, frankly, absurd.

While I appreciate the author’s effort to incorporate feminist and LGBTQ representation, using a colonial setting like Roanoke for these themes didn’t sit well with me. It felt off-putting, especially given the historical context of such a settlement.

Overall, while the writing and Thelia’s character offered some enjoyment, the blending of mythology with colonial history didn’t work for me. It might appeal to readers looking for something unconventional, but I personally couldn’t fully connect with it.