A unique retelling of the Ten Labours of Hercules from award-winning author of Someone You Can Build A Nest In. Well-written and creative, with some clever spins on Greek myth, but it gets repetitive after a while with Hercules doing his labours and befriending monsters, and Hera searching for various gods across Greece. The attempts at humour feel forced, and the story doesn’t really seem to know where it’s going until it gets there. Not one for me.

A surprising lovechild of Heracle's tragedy with Game of Thrones (Hera is going through it!). The prose is gorgeous and the found family plot is very charming.

It does drag A LOT on the middle, to the point that I almost DNF with 100 pages left. Some of the works and characters should have been cut, since it is already made clear in the story that the legend we have heard is "not the real story". Also, too much stick for little carrot.

But if you are going to read it slowly and altern it with other things to get the respite that Heracles doesn't, it is doable. And the casual LGBT+ mentions are very refreshing!

So this was not it for me, but it is SO well written that I will still pounce on anything this author publishes.

💭 #QOTD  who's your favourite Greek God/Goddess?

Title: Wearing the Lion
Author: John Wiswell
Pages: 384
Rating: 5/5
Spice/Romance level: 🩷 general relationship, marriage and partnership.
#Arc eCopy ( #gifted ) - review left voluntarily
UK publish date - 19th June 2025

@john_wiswell is such a gorgeous writer. After reading someone you can build a nest in, I was so excited for this book.

He writes monsters so well and this didn't disappoint. The found family, the emotion, the grief and even humour was so well written. I was invested in everyone!

Wiswell does cosy monster fantasy right, and although this was based on the Greek myths it is still amazingly written. Words painting so many pictures of Heracles journey.

I am in awe of this writer. Unique, breathtaking and beautifully descriptive! A wonderful escapism.


You'll love this book if you like
- Greek Mythology
- the story of Hera and Heracles
- well described monsters
- magical writing and world building
- found family
- unaliving people with kindness
- monsters have feelings too.

What an emotional rollercoaster!

Thank you Netgalley, John Wiswell and Quercus Books for the eARC!

I really enjoyed this book. It covers so much: FOUND FAMILY!!, dealing with grief and losing loved ones, finding family in unexpected places, the importance of kindness, and even outsmarting your enemies. It also gets into forgiveness and owning up to your mistakes in a really honest way. Oh, and there’s definitely some great moment or two about seriously hating your DIPSHIT husband lmao.

This is a retelling of the 12 labors of Heracles with great twists. I actually went pretty blind into this story, because I wasn't really familiar with his mtyh. I just love the Disney Hercules movie lmao.

The story is told in dual pov, we get into Hera's and Heracles' head. They're flawed, they're human. Yes, even Hera too. I think we finally get good greek god/goddess representations because they were PETTY. And Hera IS petty. She's THE powerful cringefail bossgirl archetype whom I just LOVE. I actually preferred her chapters over the Heracles ones. Though he is a sweet and broken guy, in this one. The way he loses his family and then slowly builds a new one, with the most unexpected “people”, was so beautifully done, it really hit me emotionally by the end.

This book has strong main characters but I have to mention the side characters! They all had their own individual voices, and even the animal companions had their distinctive personalities.

The reason i couldn't give this a 5 stars is the pacing. The mid section was a bit of a drag. Hercules doing his labours and always doing the unexpected, wasn't as unexpected after a while. There was a rather obvious pattern and i think that could have been, i don't know how, differently done.

But overall, a really wonderful work in the list of modern greek retelling, I can recommend it if you're into these kind of stories.

2.5⭐️

I didn’t love this book as much as I wanted to. This just didn’t work for me. But that could be due to not being in the right headspace so I will revisit this book at some point. I did really struggle with this and at times just didn’t want to pick it up. However, I did enjoy the writing style of this.

John Wiswell continues to impress and this is one that will stick with me. An amazing journey that hit right at the end.

Hmm. This book did some things really beautifully. I loved the Boar and Atlas, and how Heracles's interactions with them bring out resonances in his own quest to expiate the murder of his sons, and discover who cursed him to do such a deed. I thought his brief encounters with imposters, who take his names and actually do the deeds that we recognize as the labors of Heracles today, rather than the kinder variants of thosee actions in this book, were beautiful. There's a wonderful moment at the pyre of one such imposter, who is exactly the hot-header killer that traditional Heracles is remembered to be (e.g., Edith Hamilton's version), and our Heracles says, 'I wish I'd known this version of myself, who knew how to be angry.' Because that's what separates this Heracles from other versions: this Heracles is not an angry man. He loses everything to Hera's spite, and cannot be angry about it. It's a distinctive characterization, but I do think it rings more than a little bit false. I cannot imagine the kind of person who has been so deeply wronged as he was, who was forced to murder his children so that even their shades in Hades cower from him -- and yet his reaction upon confronting Hera is some version of, 'Oh, well, since you feel bad about it, I'm glad you had that journey of self-discovery.'

In fact, I think much of Hera's character arc feels a bit . . . off. It's hard to do Greek mythology well. On the one hand, they are unspeakably more powerful than humans. On the other, they are the pettiest, most pathetic squabbling losers you can imagine. But if you're going to tell a story half from Hera's perspective, which starts with her trying to murder a child, and moves on to having her force a man to murder his three children, you're going to have to work very hard to give her a character arc that makes her anything other than a monster. I think Wiswell is very intentional about how he goes about doing that: He builds a tale that's not just about Hera, but about Greek Gods in general slowly changing who they are, thinking about growing beyond the pathetic squabbling losers they used to be. Wiswell doesn't like monsters in his books. He doesn't like people (or gods) to be irredeemable.

But I think some things are unforgiveable. And Hera's actions are included in that list. Having Heracles forgive her, when his own sons' ghosts cannot look at him, is wrong. He earned some measure of forgiveness from them, a million times more than whatever little internal journey of remorse Hera went through. And even if no one is entitled to forgiveness after those kinds of actions, it is within a narrator's power to grant it. Wiswell made the wrong choice to grant it to Hera, while still witholding it from Heracles.

This was a unique retelling of Hercules that had me chuckling quite a few times.

Most retellings make you hate all the gods and goddesses. This one made you question their motives and inner thoughts.

“Auntie Hera” loathes every minute of Heracles' adoration - he is the result of her husband’s infidelity after all. Despite causing a lot of problems for Hercules, he always makes them work in his favour and thanks his ‘Auntie’ for such fortune.
That is until she takes it too far and, grieving and desperate for revenge, Heracles sets off to find the god responsible (because he could never believe it is his goddess).

“𝗜 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲. 𝗜’𝗹𝗹 𝗽𝘂𝘁 𝗳𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗻𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯.”
𝗭𝗲𝘂𝘀 𝘀𝗮𝘆𝘀, “𝗗𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗽𝘂𝘁 𝘀𝗻𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯.”
“𝗢𝗵, 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗹𝗹 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲. 𝗬𝗼𝘂’𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝘆 𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗳𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝘅 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝗿𝗮𝗸𝗲, 𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁.”

𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗔𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗲 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗮, 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗻𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗹𝘆. 𝗪𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝗮 𝗹𝗼𝘁. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗹𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗻𝗼𝘄. 𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀. 𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝘁𝘀?

This is told in the second person from both Hera and Hercules, jumping back and forth and causing a hysterical contrast of these two characters.

If you are familiar with Greek mythology, there are so many Easter eggs to catch. Apollo the domain stealer.
Plus, Hercules names the Nimean Lion Purrseus.

There was a bit of repetition after the halfway point as Hercules is dealing with brief and responsibility and Hera starts worrying about her own accountability and morality. This slowed the pace down.

A lot of reviews say this is really dark. Honestly, I don’t see it. It’s a Greek mythology retelling and so it’s dark in that it follows the caprice of gods. Yet the tone was light and cozy and funny, and there was no graphic content.

P.S. word ‘dipshit’ is used more than five times to describe Zeus, her dipshit husband. That’s too many!!

Arc gifted by Head of Zeus.
(This is definitely not endorsed by Zeus though because, as we know, Zeus is a dipshit.)

I'm rarely drawn to mythological retellings. I find there's a difficult internal tension caused by my relative lack of knowledge of the source material that causes a lot of them to look the same. I like that there are so many feminist retellings of Greek mythology, but I don't know my Elektras from my Clymenestras, my Atlantas from my Medeas (I loved Circe though, the book and the character). When I saw Wearing the Lion by John Wiswell, promising a different take on Herakles’ story, I was both intrigued and surprised at how much I wanted to check it out.

Ironically, there is a healthy dollop of feminist retelling here - this is Hera’s book as much as Herakles’. His mother raises him to worship Hera above all else, but Hera's rage at Zeus's infidelities latches onto Herakles as a target, and she ruins his life. Herakles sets off on a quest to find out which god wronged him, and undertakes many labours as he does.

What stands out immediately is the contemporary tone of the novel, which I found delightful, but may ruffle feathers. There's a matter of fact snappiness to the prose, and it's the first time I've seen a version of Hera refer to her husband as a ‘dipshit’. At times, it's almost laugh-out-loud funny. The two protagonists also narrate in first and second person, with the ‘you’ usually being each other, as Herakles frames his exploits in prayers to Hera, while Hera rants in Herakles’ general direction. It felt pretty natural with the rest of the style of the prose, and sometimes gave the novel an epistolary feel.

What impressed me though about Wearing the Lion was the messy complexity of the protagonists, especially Hera. No flaw is simple or easily fixed, and characters go through false revelations and hide depths of thought. Despite the contemporary tone, the gods feel like Greek gods, capricious, self important and stubborn, while also maintaining the aforementioned complexities.

Ultimately, this is a story about empathy. This version of Herakles is not a warmonger or a violent man. In the monsters of the world, he sees himself - and often his relatives, as monsters in the world of Greek mythology tend to be. Instead of violence he chooses understanding. Which doesn't mean there is no action or peril, just that the nature of the action doesn't have to have murderous intent, at least on the side of Herakles. And this is also a story about healing through trauma and finding a path to be a better person, without taking the easy way out.

I found Wearing the Lion to be largely successful at navigating the tricky emotional states of its characters while reinterpreting one of Greek mythologies most well known stories in a novel way. Purists may balk at the more modern turns of phrase and quests flipped upside down, but I would urge everyone to give it a chance. I did and I loved it.

Wearing The Lion is a dual pov (between Hera and Hercules) which follows the classic tale of Hercules! I love greek mythology so this was going to be a guaranteed read for me :)

I’ll be honest, I requested this from Netgalley because I saw the author’s name and the cover, I was not expecting a homage to Greek mythology (and probably wouldn’t have picked it if I’d known) but wow! That was quite literally epic.
Heracles is named for Hera, queen of the gods but she only sees him as further proof of Zeus’ infidelities. The story is told in a dual narrative between Hera and Heracles, and it’s fascinating to see how their story unfolds. I particularly love the fact that although Heracles is infinitely strong, his greatest power is his kindness and compassion. The lesson is very much the importance of being a force for good.
A definite recommendation for those who love mythology and those who love found family, even if that family is beasts of legend.

Wearing The Lion by John Wiswell is such a good story and book. This author is a genious! I loved the experience of reading it and I totally recommend everyone to read this book as fast as they can.

4.5 rounded to 5 stars.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for giving me an ARC.

I really enjoyed this re-telling of the Heracles myth. First of all thank you to the author for using Heracles and not the Romanised Hercules - it may seem like a small detail but it drives me mad!

Sometimes it's difficult for an author to make a story feel like their own when it's re-telling a well-known story, but this was really well done! The characters, whilst familiar, all felt unique from their classical personalities, and I'm delighted Hera got to call Zeus a dipshit (many times!).

The prose was great and the dialogue was one of the strongest features of the book. It cemented the dynamic between families perfectly and was very realistic (or as realistic as dialogue between gods can be).

Although very different from Someone You Can Build A Nest In, I really enjoyed both books, and I'm very excited to see what the author writes in the future!