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Psyche and Eros
Has the god of love finally met his match?
Prepare to fall for this glorious reimagining of Greek mythology about a god struck by his own cursed arrow and the mortal woman who teaches him what love truly means…
Psyche, princess of Mycenae, was born with a prophecy that she will one day conquer a great monster. Rejecting her royal duties, Psyche spends her youth mastering blade and bow, preparing for her destiny. Tales of her beauty and rebellious nature reach even the goddess Aphrodite, who decides to teach Psyche a lesson.
Aphrodite commands Eros, the god of desire, to deliver a cruel love curse. After eons watching humanity misuse his gifts, the last thing Eros wants is to become involved in the chaos of the mortal world. But when he accidentally pricks himself with the arrow intended for Psyche, Eros finds himself doomed to yearn for a woman who will be torn from him the moment their eyes meet.
Thrown together by fate, headstrong Psyche and world-weary Eros will face challenges greater than they could have ever imagined. As the Trojan War begins and divine powers try to keep them apart, the pair must determine: could this be true love, or is that only a myth?
A joyous and subversive tale of gods, monsters, and the human heart and soul, Psyche and Eros dazzles the senses while exploring notions of trust, sacrifice, and what it truly means to be a hero. With unforgettably vivid characters, spellbinding prose, and delicious tension, Luna McNamara has crafted a shimmering and propulsive debut novel about a love so strong it defies the will of Olympus.
Prepare to fall for this glorious reimagining of Greek mythology about a god struck by his own cursed arrow and the mortal woman who teaches him what love truly means…
Psyche, princess of Mycenae, was born with a prophecy that she will one day conquer a great monster. Rejecting her royal duties, Psyche spends her youth mastering blade and bow, preparing for her destiny. Tales of her beauty and rebellious nature reach even the goddess Aphrodite, who decides to teach Psyche a lesson.
Aphrodite commands Eros, the god of desire, to deliver a cruel love curse. After eons watching humanity misuse his gifts, the last thing Eros wants is to become involved in the chaos of the mortal world. But when he accidentally pricks himself with the arrow intended for Psyche, Eros finds himself doomed to yearn for a woman who will be torn from him the moment their eyes meet.
Thrown together by fate, headstrong Psyche and world-weary Eros will face challenges greater than they could have ever imagined. As the Trojan War begins and divine powers try to keep them apart, the pair must determine: could this be true love, or is that only a myth?
A joyous and subversive tale of gods, monsters, and the human heart and soul, Psyche and Eros dazzles the senses while exploring notions of trust, sacrifice, and what it truly means to be a hero. With unforgettably vivid characters, spellbinding prose, and delicious tension, Luna McNamara has crafted a shimmering and propulsive debut novel about a love so strong it defies the will of Olympus.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published May 25, 2023
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71361 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,220 reviews
June 4, 2023
I knew I'd have issues with this book the moment I saw the Prologue being pre-emptively defensive about there being only 3 words for love in Greek without presenting an argument other than plot necessity. When you feel the need to start off your novel with a prologue in which you lay out your choice of plot that goes against most academia but without a convincing argument for it, that spells trouble. And the author's notes by the end didn't help matters since she merely waved it away with "there's some debate" about the number of Greek words for love but doesn't say what this supposed debate is built on and omits one word from the count. This is coming from an author that puts in her bio that she's studied Greek and Roman history and language.
And since we're on the subject of authors with supposed expertise in Greek & Roman culture, I have to ask the hard question: what is their problem with feminine women in ancient Greece and Rome? Why do they feel the need to take a feminine woman and make her into some warrior princess she never was? There are already some women like that in their myths, like Atalanta, Penthesilea, Artemis, Hippolyta, etc., that you could use if all you want is "active" women who can wield a bow and fight like men. So why do you take women who aren't warriors or tomboys and rewrite them as some sort of tomboys who can be as manly as any Greek hero with the excuse that it's "feminist"? How is it feminist to negate a woman's personality and distort it into another kind of personality that you, a modern woman from the 21st century who probably thinks Wonder Woman is the epitome of feminism, think is the correct way to be a "hero"?
Psyche is the only story with a Heroine's Journey arc in Greco-Roman mythology, and it turns out she is a feminine and "girlie" character. She is no warrior, she doesn't go around shooting at stuff and challenging the males to athletic & horsemanship competitions. But in this retelling, Luna McNamara twisted her into some unrecognisable warrior princess with an abrasive personality that expresses misandrist opinions at times (except when she has to fall in love with Eros, of course) and learns to fight with none other than Atalanta. Our sweet, kind, hard-working, persistent, and courageous but also naïve and flawed Psyche is turned into some wannabe Amazon for the sake of appealing to modern sensibilities that can't stand a woman who can't fight and save herself, apparently.
And that's only the start of the issues, because there's more. McNamara doesn't like Apuleius' tale much, which she dismissively labels as "so termed Roman myth" and decides it needs almost complete reworking, so she cooks a soup of all myths regardless of consistency and narrative cohesion. She makes Eros not the son of Aphrodite and Mars as Apuleius wrote it but threw in Hesiod's version of the myth that has Eros as one of the primordial gods that existed before the Olympians. Bear in mind that Eros & Psyche is Apuleius' creation, there are myths about Eros and Psyche earlier than his book but they are different and don't make them a couple. Aside Apuleius, we don't have any early version about Eros & Psyche as a couple, so yes, the "so termed Roman myth" isn't even a myth but a Roman novel, not a Greek myth, whether you like it or not. By that time, Greece had been part of the Roman empire for centuries and its culture had been absorbed into Rome's quite intrinsically. You'd think someone who's studied the classics would know how to distinguish between the actual myths relayed as they were told, like Hesiod's, and retellings and reinventions of those myths, like Apuleius or Euripides. But McNamara doesn't, she pretends it's all the same, that this is some strange myth that defies categorisation, blah, blah, and let's forget there's depths of philosophical allegory in the tale that come from Apuleius' particular worldview. I'm always surprised by supposed classicists that can't tell one from the other.
So, here we have a mediocre pastiche of the actual myths surrounding Eros with the novel by Apuleius plus Greek drama bits and plenty of personal tastes forced into foreign ancient mythology. Eros is forced to be Aphrodite's "son," why? Because she says so and he can't avoid becoming her slave. Psyche is made a Mycenaean princess and granddaughter of Perseus, why? Because the author wanted it, screw cohesion. Psyche's sisters aren't the envious saboteurs as in the novel, why? Because the author despises having precious sisterly bonds depicted negatively, screw that as a social worker she'd know well how dysfunctional families can be, but of course let's keep Aphrodite as the arch-villain and make her even eviller than in the novel, because that's not sexist, no, sir, only showing women as bad sisters is sexist.
The story becomes a name-dropping marathon of Who's Who in Greek mythology. Everyone worth a mention in the heroic cycle appears here. The author decided this story would take place during the Trojan War timeline, because why not, a time where human sacrifice was still practised, but somehow making a feminine girl a tomboy so she's properly feminist is more important than the horrific customs of the time. You get a catwalk throng of heroes and gods sashaying around here, and all changed from how they are in the myths. Why? Because "myths are always evolving and adapting." Yeah? Is Greece your culture and are those myths part of your modern culture? No. The author is American, and as many Anglophone authors recently, seems to think they can take another culture's mythology and do as they please with it in the name of "reclaiming it" or making it feminist.
Whilst I particularly hated the changes to Psyche's character, I also didn't think the other changes made sense. Why make Penelope the sister of Helen and not Clytemnestra? Why make Aphrodite's motives for punishing Psyche not a matter of divine prerogatives accidentally infringed on but jealousy over Eros being freed from his slavery to her? Why change the three tasks of Psyche to your taste and involve Eros in them when they're Psyche's to solve? And the biggest question of them all: why on Hades make the gods deny Psyche her boon of becoming a goddess and make her become a goddess illegally through an unauthorised potion by Hekate et al.? That wouldn't be possible, Zeus could kill Psyche for becoming an immortal without his authorisation. And in any case, it was him who made her an immortal on Eros' pleading in the first place, so what's so bad about this that it needed changing? Nobody can become a god without Zeus allowing it, so this outcome is nonsensical to the Nth degree. And it also warps the only happy ending in a Greek myth-based story that was actually earned.
So, no, this isn't a good retelling for so many reasons but mainly for the incongruous pastiche of Everything Goes plots. And it isn't even a good romance because there's such a throng of characters and mishmashed plotlines that there's hardly any time for Eros and Psyche to build a relationship. It's a collage of half-chewed ideas that were plucked out at will and fancy and put together regardless of cohesion, in a world that doesn't read like Greece in any time period, and much less like Troy-era Greece because the gods and the heroes talk and think rather modernly.
I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
And since we're on the subject of authors with supposed expertise in Greek & Roman culture, I have to ask the hard question: what is their problem with feminine women in ancient Greece and Rome? Why do they feel the need to take a feminine woman and make her into some warrior princess she never was? There are already some women like that in their myths, like Atalanta, Penthesilea, Artemis, Hippolyta, etc., that you could use if all you want is "active" women who can wield a bow and fight like men. So why do you take women who aren't warriors or tomboys and rewrite them as some sort of tomboys who can be as manly as any Greek hero with the excuse that it's "feminist"? How is it feminist to negate a woman's personality and distort it into another kind of personality that you, a modern woman from the 21st century who probably thinks Wonder Woman is the epitome of feminism, think is the correct way to be a "hero"?
Psyche is the only story with a Heroine's Journey arc in Greco-Roman mythology, and it turns out she is a feminine and "girlie" character. She is no warrior, she doesn't go around shooting at stuff and challenging the males to athletic & horsemanship competitions. But in this retelling, Luna McNamara twisted her into some unrecognisable warrior princess with an abrasive personality that expresses misandrist opinions at times (except when she has to fall in love with Eros, of course) and learns to fight with none other than Atalanta. Our sweet, kind, hard-working, persistent, and courageous but also naïve and flawed Psyche is turned into some wannabe Amazon for the sake of appealing to modern sensibilities that can't stand a woman who can't fight and save herself, apparently.
And that's only the start of the issues, because there's more. McNamara doesn't like Apuleius' tale much, which she dismissively labels as "so termed Roman myth" and decides it needs almost complete reworking, so she cooks a soup of all myths regardless of consistency and narrative cohesion. She makes Eros not the son of Aphrodite and Mars as Apuleius wrote it but threw in Hesiod's version of the myth that has Eros as one of the primordial gods that existed before the Olympians. Bear in mind that Eros & Psyche is Apuleius' creation, there are myths about Eros and Psyche earlier than his book but they are different and don't make them a couple. Aside Apuleius, we don't have any early version about Eros & Psyche as a couple, so yes, the "so termed Roman myth" isn't even a myth but a Roman novel, not a Greek myth, whether you like it or not. By that time, Greece had been part of the Roman empire for centuries and its culture had been absorbed into Rome's quite intrinsically. You'd think someone who's studied the classics would know how to distinguish between the actual myths relayed as they were told, like Hesiod's, and retellings and reinventions of those myths, like Apuleius or Euripides. But McNamara doesn't, she pretends it's all the same, that this is some strange myth that defies categorisation, blah, blah, and let's forget there's depths of philosophical allegory in the tale that come from Apuleius' particular worldview. I'm always surprised by supposed classicists that can't tell one from the other.
So, here we have a mediocre pastiche of the actual myths surrounding Eros with the novel by Apuleius plus Greek drama bits and plenty of personal tastes forced into foreign ancient mythology. Eros is forced to be Aphrodite's "son," why? Because she says so and he can't avoid becoming her slave. Psyche is made a Mycenaean princess and granddaughter of Perseus, why? Because the author wanted it, screw cohesion. Psyche's sisters aren't the envious saboteurs as in the novel, why? Because the author despises having precious sisterly bonds depicted negatively, screw that as a social worker she'd know well how dysfunctional families can be, but of course let's keep Aphrodite as the arch-villain and make her even eviller than in the novel, because that's not sexist, no, sir, only showing women as bad sisters is sexist.
The story becomes a name-dropping marathon of Who's Who in Greek mythology. Everyone worth a mention in the heroic cycle appears here. The author decided this story would take place during the Trojan War timeline, because why not, a time where human sacrifice was still practised, but somehow making a feminine girl a tomboy so she's properly feminist is more important than the horrific customs of the time. You get a catwalk throng of heroes and gods sashaying around here, and all changed from how they are in the myths. Why? Because "myths are always evolving and adapting." Yeah? Is Greece your culture and are those myths part of your modern culture? No. The author is American, and as many Anglophone authors recently, seems to think they can take another culture's mythology and do as they please with it in the name of "reclaiming it" or making it feminist.
Whilst I particularly hated the changes to Psyche's character, I also didn't think the other changes made sense. Why make Penelope the sister of Helen and not Clytemnestra? Why make Aphrodite's motives for punishing Psyche not a matter of divine prerogatives accidentally infringed on but jealousy over Eros being freed from his slavery to her? Why change the three tasks of Psyche to your taste and involve Eros in them when they're Psyche's to solve? And the biggest question of them all: why on Hades make the gods deny Psyche her boon of becoming a goddess and make her become a goddess illegally through an unauthorised potion by Hekate et al.? That wouldn't be possible, Zeus could kill Psyche for becoming an immortal without his authorisation. And in any case, it was him who made her an immortal on Eros' pleading in the first place, so what's so bad about this that it needed changing? Nobody can become a god without Zeus allowing it, so this outcome is nonsensical to the Nth degree. And it also warps the only happy ending in a Greek myth-based story that was actually earned.
So, no, this isn't a good retelling for so many reasons but mainly for the incongruous pastiche of Everything Goes plots. And it isn't even a good romance because there's such a throng of characters and mishmashed plotlines that there's hardly any time for Eros and Psyche to build a relationship. It's a collage of half-chewed ideas that were plucked out at will and fancy and put together regardless of cohesion, in a world that doesn't read like Greece in any time period, and much less like Troy-era Greece because the gods and the heroes talk and think rather modernly.
I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
January 27, 2023
im not super familiar with the tale of psyche and eros, so i really enjoyed learning more about their story.
but that also means i cant personally comment on how this particular retelling compares to the original. however, looking at other reviews, it seems that LM has taken MANY liberties with the myth. that obviously didnt bother me since i dont really know any better, but just a heads up for readers who are familiar with the original content. this is probably more of a reimagining rather than a retelling.
that being said, i quite liked this. i definitely think eros outshines psyche in terms of characterisation and development. maybe its because the nature of the gods is so unchanging, so it was refreshing to see his heart bend a little. i thought it was portrayed in realistic and relatable way. and psyche is an interesting character, but i struggled to connect to her at times.
i also had no idea that the story of psyche and eros overlaps with the trojan war. ive read so many retellings about the war, so i wish this didnt spend so much page time focusing on certain events surrounding helen and iphigenia, as it felt like it took away from the main story. but i appreciate how it shows how all the myths are connected.
overall, i enjoyed this particular greek myth reimagining and has me on the lookout to see what LM writes next!
thank you, william morrow, for the ARC!
↠ 4 stars
but that also means i cant personally comment on how this particular retelling compares to the original. however, looking at other reviews, it seems that LM has taken MANY liberties with the myth. that obviously didnt bother me since i dont really know any better, but just a heads up for readers who are familiar with the original content. this is probably more of a reimagining rather than a retelling.
that being said, i quite liked this. i definitely think eros outshines psyche in terms of characterisation and development. maybe its because the nature of the gods is so unchanging, so it was refreshing to see his heart bend a little. i thought it was portrayed in realistic and relatable way. and psyche is an interesting character, but i struggled to connect to her at times.
i also had no idea that the story of psyche and eros overlaps with the trojan war. ive read so many retellings about the war, so i wish this didnt spend so much page time focusing on certain events surrounding helen and iphigenia, as it felt like it took away from the main story. but i appreciate how it shows how all the myths are connected.
overall, i enjoyed this particular greek myth reimagining and has me on the lookout to see what LM writes next!
thank you, william morrow, for the ARC!
↠ 4 stars
February 4, 2025
I didn't think I'd like this, but I did.
This was a random grab I made because I was out of reading material and I needed something to tide me over. Honestly, I was inwardly cringing because I thought this had a 50% chance of being one of those YA myth romances that are chock full of squicky cliches about clumsy yet unintentionally sexy heroines, and copy and paste phrasing about dark looks, chiseled jawlines, & flutterings in random places.
It didn't. And my happiness, much like the Grinch's heart, grew a bit that day.
McNamara retold Psyche & Eros by mashing up a lot of characters and reworking the myths to fit her story.
That's fine with me.
If you're a stickler for retellings that stick close to the originals, you may end up pissed off. So, what I'm trying to say is that depending on how you approach this book and/or personal preferences?
Your mileage may vary.
Alright. The skinny gist is that you have this princess (Psyche) who was prophesied to slay a monster.
And then you have this elemental god of Desire (Eros) who was around before the Olympians.
Right away, a lot of you are seeing how this doesn't exactly track with the original.
And yet...
Spoilery things happen and Eros and Psyche end up "married" and living in his magical seaside house, never laying eyes on each other due to a curse. The curse goes into effect when Psyche does her curiosity killed the cat routine, flipping on the light switch to make sure she's not married to some kind of monster, and the lovers are parted forever.
OR ARE THEY?
I liked the story McNamara told, but that may be because these myths are typically a tad rapey & misogynistic, and given a straight-up retelling, not likely to find an audience outside of dark romance fans. So, I think I tend to give authors a wide berth to change things and make them more palatable to a larger swath of modern readers. It's always fun to go back and read the original tales, though. And maybe some readers who are new to these stories will find them because of authors like this.
Recommended with stipulations. <--Goodreader, know thyself
This was a random grab I made because I was out of reading material and I needed something to tide me over. Honestly, I was inwardly cringing because I thought this had a 50% chance of being one of those YA myth romances that are chock full of squicky cliches about clumsy yet unintentionally sexy heroines, and copy and paste phrasing about dark looks, chiseled jawlines, & flutterings in random places.
It didn't. And my happiness, much like the Grinch's heart, grew a bit that day.
McNamara retold Psyche & Eros by mashing up a lot of characters and reworking the myths to fit her story.
That's fine with me.
If you're a stickler for retellings that stick close to the originals, you may end up pissed off. So, what I'm trying to say is that depending on how you approach this book and/or personal preferences?
Your mileage may vary.
Alright. The skinny gist is that you have this princess (Psyche) who was prophesied to slay a monster.
And then you have this elemental god of Desire (Eros) who was around before the Olympians.
Right away, a lot of you are seeing how this doesn't exactly track with the original.
And yet...
Spoilery things happen and Eros and Psyche end up "married" and living in his magical seaside house, never laying eyes on each other due to a curse. The curse goes into effect when Psyche does her curiosity killed the cat routine, flipping on the light switch to make sure she's not married to some kind of monster, and the lovers are parted forever.
OR ARE THEY?
I liked the story McNamara told, but that may be because these myths are typically a tad rapey & misogynistic, and given a straight-up retelling, not likely to find an audience outside of dark romance fans. So, I think I tend to give authors a wide berth to change things and make them more palatable to a larger swath of modern readers. It's always fun to go back and read the original tales, though. And maybe some readers who are new to these stories will find them because of authors like this.
Recommended with stipulations. <--Goodreader, know thyself
April 6, 2023
This book prides itself on being subversive and nuanced. I'm not so sure about that. A few notes:
1) I am not opposed to taking liberties with the source material. My issue is that any potential consequences are not interrogated well (if at all). Okay, fine, make Penelope the sister, not cousin, of Helen and Clytemnestra. Make Psyche the niece of Agamemnon and cousin of Iphigenia. Eliminate Psyche's sisters entirely, using Iphigenia as a stand-in for a crucial aspect of the myth (and not very well, imo. The sisters would've been a better source of tension. Iphigenia spends like three seconds questioning Psyche about her mysterious husband). The book does precisely nothing to justify these choices. The Trojan War side storyline felt like window dressing and took oxygen away from the core myth, which frankly needed more breathing space. Why change anything, then? There are a million examples like this but I don't care to type them all out.
2) There is a type of historical romance novel which embodies #GirlBoss #Feminism. It values physical strength and traditionally "masculine" pursuits over "girly" hobbies like embroidery and housekeeping. Any silly female who enjoys the latter is merely validating patriarchal ideals. It's one-note in a misguided attempt to dismantle the patriarchy. The more thoughtful books, like Olivia Waite's THE LADY'S GUIDE TO CELESTIAL MECHANICS, have a more nuanced interpretation of feminist revolution.
PSYCHE AND EROS isn't a historical romance, but it suffers from the same problem. I was open, if cautious, to the idea of making Psyche an accomplished warrior with hero ambitions. Psyche wants to train under the hero Atalanta? There's zero evidence for this characterization in the source material, but I initially didn't care because I assumed the worldbuilding would be nuanced. Well, maybe I should have cared, lol. Perhaps it's possible to create a subversive "Psyche is a badass warrior" retelling, but this book isn't it. There are so many *actual* badass female warriors in Greek mythology. It seems like a waste to haphazardly slap on this backstory to Psyche of all heroines.
3) I could forgive #1 and #2 if the romantic ship was great. Alas, it was not.
4) The Eros sections were far more interesting and thoughtful than Psyche's point-of-view. The book would've been a lot better if it was solely from Eros's perspective.
I am still three-starring because I liked the audiobook narration and the writing was good enough for me to finish. NY publishing is flooded with subversive Greek retellings, so it's unsurprising that some of them don't live up to the advertising. If you're looking for a Madeline Miller readalike, this isn't it. If you don't give a fuck about the mythological source material, you might enjoy PYSCHE AND EROS.
Read via audio (narrated by Rachel Petladwala and Joshua Riley).
Disclaimer: I listened to a free audiobook via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
1) I am not opposed to taking liberties with the source material. My issue is that any potential consequences are not interrogated well (if at all). Okay, fine, make Penelope the sister, not cousin, of Helen and Clytemnestra. Make Psyche the niece of Agamemnon and cousin of Iphigenia. Eliminate Psyche's sisters entirely, using Iphigenia as a stand-in for a crucial aspect of the myth (and not very well, imo. The sisters would've been a better source of tension. Iphigenia spends like three seconds questioning Psyche about her mysterious husband). The book does precisely nothing to justify these choices. The Trojan War side storyline felt like window dressing and took oxygen away from the core myth, which frankly needed more breathing space. Why change anything, then? There are a million examples like this but I don't care to type them all out.
2) There is a type of historical romance novel which embodies #GirlBoss #Feminism. It values physical strength and traditionally "masculine" pursuits over "girly" hobbies like embroidery and housekeeping. Any silly female who enjoys the latter is merely validating patriarchal ideals. It's one-note in a misguided attempt to dismantle the patriarchy. The more thoughtful books, like Olivia Waite's THE LADY'S GUIDE TO CELESTIAL MECHANICS, have a more nuanced interpretation of feminist revolution.
PSYCHE AND EROS isn't a historical romance, but it suffers from the same problem. I was open, if cautious, to the idea of making Psyche an accomplished warrior with hero ambitions. Psyche wants to train under the hero Atalanta? There's zero evidence for this characterization in the source material, but I initially didn't care because I assumed the worldbuilding would be nuanced. Well, maybe I should have cared, lol. Perhaps it's possible to create a subversive "Psyche is a badass warrior" retelling, but this book isn't it. There are so many *actual* badass female warriors in Greek mythology. It seems like a waste to haphazardly slap on this backstory to Psyche of all heroines.
3) I could forgive #1 and #2 if the romantic ship was great. Alas, it was not.
4) The Eros sections were far more interesting and thoughtful than Psyche's point-of-view. The book would've been a lot better if it was solely from Eros's perspective.
I am still three-starring because I liked the audiobook narration and the writing was good enough for me to finish. NY publishing is flooded with subversive Greek retellings, so it's unsurprising that some of them don't live up to the advertising. If you're looking for a Madeline Miller readalike, this isn't it. If you don't give a fuck about the mythological source material, you might enjoy PYSCHE AND EROS.
Read via audio (narrated by Rachel Petladwala and Joshua Riley).
Disclaimer: I listened to a free audiobook via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
September 14, 2023
ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ 4 "Who said love is a myth?" 💫 🏹🥀
“Bʏ ʟᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ᴛʀᴜʟʏ ʟᴏᴠᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴏɴᴇ ᴇʟsᴇ, ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴇᴀʀɴ ᴛᴏ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ. Aɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜʀsᴇʟғ, ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ᴍᴀʏ ʙᴇ ᴇᴠᴇɴ ʜᴀʀᴅᴇʀ.”
For someone who wasn't familiar with Eros and Psyche's story, this book was the best Greek myth book I have ever read. When I requested for the arc I didn't expect to get the arc. Honestly, I didn't expect this book to be so good. I love Greek mythology and I know it's surprising that I wasn't familiar with this couple but eyyy maybe it was my destiny to learn about them in this book lol.
Anyway, I loved reading this book. The writing was beautiful. I was hooked from the first page. The world, the characters, and everything were mwah. There were some moments where I wanted to cry and this book made me feel so many things. I love the cover of this book. It's sooo gorgeous 😍.
“Wᴇ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ɴᴏᴛ ɪɴ ᴛʜʀᴀʟʟ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴇsᴛɪɴʏ ᴏʀ ғᴀᴛᴇ, ʙᴜᴛ ᴍᴇʀᴇʟʏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴇɪɢʜᴛ ᴏғ ᴏᴜʀ ᴏᴡɴ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇs. Wʜᴇɴ ᴡᴇ ᴛᴜʀɴᴇᴅ ᴛᴏᴡᴀʀᴅ ᴇᴀᴄʜ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ʟɪᴋᴇ ғʟᴏᴡᴇʀs ғᴀᴄɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ sᴜɴ, ᴡᴇ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ɴᴏᴛ ғᴜʟғɪʟʟɪɴɢ sᴏᴍᴇ ᴘʀᴏᴘʜᴇᴄʏ ᴏʀ ᴏʟᴅ sᴛᴏʀʏ. Wᴇ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ᴡʀɪᴛɪɴɢ ᴏᴜʀ ᴏᴡɴ.”
╰┈➤ Psyche
Ok, I have to admit that she is from now on my favorite heroine. She is sooo brave and the way she never gave up. She isn't like the other Greek girls from the myths. She is special and that makes her have a special place in my heart. She never doubted herself and believed herself to be a heroine one day. I love her.
"Wɪᴛʜ Psʏᴄʜᴇ, ᴍʏ ʟɪғᴇ ᴡᴀs ʟɪᴍɴᴇᴅ ɪɴ ɢᴏʟᴅ."
╰┈➤ Eros:
This man never wanted to fall in love although he is the cupid. And when he fell in love he fell deeply. To be honest, I never was that interested in eros when it came to Greek gods. But after reading this book my whole Google search is about him and Psyche. Also my whole Pinterest lol. He's sooo precious. I loved how he loved Psyche.
"Bᴜᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴀɴsᴡᴇʀ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴏ̨ᴜᴇsᴛɪᴏɴ: ʏᴇs, ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴛᴀʟ ɢɪʀʟ ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ɪs ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀ ᴛʜᴏᴜsᴀɴᴅ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ᴍᴏʀᴛᴀʟ ɢɪʀʟs, ᴀʟʟ ᴏғ ᴡʜᴏᴍ ғᴇᴇʟ ᴘᴀɪɴ ᴀɴᴅ ʜᴀᴘᴘɪɴᴇss. Sᴏᴍᴇᴛɪᴍᴇs ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴄᴀᴜsᴇs ᴏɴᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ sᴏᴍᴇᴛɪᴍᴇs ᴛʜᴇ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ – ᴍᴜᴄʜ ᴀs ɪᴛ ɪs ᴀᴍᴏɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ ɢᴏᴅs."
╰┈➤ Just random:
I never thought to hate aphrodite sm 🔪. She's a Jealous bitch 🙂🔪
Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review!
------------
Rtc
------------
Fingers crossed 🤞🏼. Manifesting for a 5-star arc read
“Bʏ ʟᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ᴛʀᴜʟʏ ʟᴏᴠᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴏɴᴇ ᴇʟsᴇ, ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴇᴀʀɴ ᴛᴏ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ. Aɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜʀsᴇʟғ, ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ᴍᴀʏ ʙᴇ ᴇᴠᴇɴ ʜᴀʀᴅᴇʀ.”
For someone who wasn't familiar with Eros and Psyche's story, this book was the best Greek myth book I have ever read. When I requested for the arc I didn't expect to get the arc. Honestly, I didn't expect this book to be so good. I love Greek mythology and I know it's surprising that I wasn't familiar with this couple but eyyy maybe it was my destiny to learn about them in this book lol.
Anyway, I loved reading this book. The writing was beautiful. I was hooked from the first page. The world, the characters, and everything were mwah. There were some moments where I wanted to cry and this book made me feel so many things. I love the cover of this book. It's sooo gorgeous 😍.
“Wᴇ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ɴᴏᴛ ɪɴ ᴛʜʀᴀʟʟ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴇsᴛɪɴʏ ᴏʀ ғᴀᴛᴇ, ʙᴜᴛ ᴍᴇʀᴇʟʏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴇɪɢʜᴛ ᴏғ ᴏᴜʀ ᴏᴡɴ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇs. Wʜᴇɴ ᴡᴇ ᴛᴜʀɴᴇᴅ ᴛᴏᴡᴀʀᴅ ᴇᴀᴄʜ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ʟɪᴋᴇ ғʟᴏᴡᴇʀs ғᴀᴄɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ sᴜɴ, ᴡᴇ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ɴᴏᴛ ғᴜʟғɪʟʟɪɴɢ sᴏᴍᴇ ᴘʀᴏᴘʜᴇᴄʏ ᴏʀ ᴏʟᴅ sᴛᴏʀʏ. Wᴇ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ᴡʀɪᴛɪɴɢ ᴏᴜʀ ᴏᴡɴ.”
╰┈➤ Psyche
Ok, I have to admit that she is from now on my favorite heroine. She is sooo brave and the way she never gave up. She isn't like the other Greek girls from the myths. She is special and that makes her have a special place in my heart. She never doubted herself and believed herself to be a heroine one day. I love her.
"Wɪᴛʜ Psʏᴄʜᴇ, ᴍʏ ʟɪғᴇ ᴡᴀs ʟɪᴍɴᴇᴅ ɪɴ ɢᴏʟᴅ."
╰┈➤ Eros:
This man never wanted to fall in love although he is the cupid. And when he fell in love he fell deeply. To be honest, I never was that interested in eros when it came to Greek gods. But after reading this book my whole Google search is about him and Psyche. Also my whole Pinterest lol. He's sooo precious. I loved how he loved Psyche.
"Bᴜᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴀɴsᴡᴇʀ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴏ̨ᴜᴇsᴛɪᴏɴ: ʏᴇs, ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴛᴀʟ ɢɪʀʟ ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ɪs ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀ ᴛʜᴏᴜsᴀɴᴅ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ᴍᴏʀᴛᴀʟ ɢɪʀʟs, ᴀʟʟ ᴏғ ᴡʜᴏᴍ ғᴇᴇʟ ᴘᴀɪɴ ᴀɴᴅ ʜᴀᴘᴘɪɴᴇss. Sᴏᴍᴇᴛɪᴍᴇs ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴄᴀᴜsᴇs ᴏɴᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ sᴏᴍᴇᴛɪᴍᴇs ᴛʜᴇ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ – ᴍᴜᴄʜ ᴀs ɪᴛ ɪs ᴀᴍᴏɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ ɢᴏᴅs."
╰┈➤ Just random:
I never thought to hate aphrodite sm 🔪. She's a Jealous bitch 🙂🔪
Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review!
------------
Rtc
------------
Fingers crossed 🤞🏼. Manifesting for a 5-star arc read
April 7, 2023
Look. You can't take all of the Greek and Roman mythology, throw it in a blender, pick out the pieces you want, mix in things that you would rather it have, and then call it a retelling. That's not how it works.
I'm one of those people that has to research things when I'm interested in it. So, when starting this book, I went ahead and refreshed my memory of the story between these two. THE OTHER CHANGED ALMOST EVERYTHING.
Psyche was never a warrior, so why make her one? She never challenged Achilles in a race, I don't think they even existed at the same time?
Honestly, everything about this book was an insult to the tale of love between Eros and Psyche. And it really bums me out.
This is not how you should handle a retelling. You can't just manipulate everything to make it do what you wish. WRITE YOUR OWN CHARACTERS IF YOU WANT THEM TO DO WHAT YOU WANT. Make a story that's "inspired by Eros and Psyche" then this is perfectly well as a novel. But not as a retelling.
You'd be better off reading the original or the cliffnotes of the original. It's a better story...
I'm one of those people that has to research things when I'm interested in it. So, when starting this book, I went ahead and refreshed my memory of the story between these two. THE OTHER CHANGED ALMOST EVERYTHING.
Psyche was never a warrior, so why make her one? She never challenged Achilles in a race, I don't think they even existed at the same time?
Honestly, everything about this book was an insult to the tale of love between Eros and Psyche. And it really bums me out.
This is not how you should handle a retelling. You can't just manipulate everything to make it do what you wish. WRITE YOUR OWN CHARACTERS IF YOU WANT THEM TO DO WHAT YOU WANT. Make a story that's "inspired by Eros and Psyche" then this is perfectly well as a novel. But not as a retelling.
You'd be better off reading the original or the cliffnotes of the original. It's a better story...
August 5, 2023
This book’s potential was ruined by the simplistic style that felt almost list-like in parts. I did this. Then I did this. Then I thought this. I was miserable. I brightened. Etc etc on and on. There was now flow to the prose and it was jarring.
Plus, every possible myth was shoehorned in like the author cared more about ticking off references than making sure they had any cohesion or relevance to the main story.
Not one of the better retellings we’ve seen recently.
July 14, 2023
I'm honestly not familiar with the original myth or story of Pshyce and Eros or very knowledgeable with anything to dovwith the subject.
But storywise I was very intruiged by the story and got very invested in the plot. At the moment I have a high rate of DNFs but this was not one of them. Had the feel of a more detailed fairytale and liked that.
But storywise I was very intruiged by the story and got very invested in the plot. At the moment I have a high rate of DNFs but this was not one of them. Had the feel of a more detailed fairytale and liked that.
June 17, 2023
Oh, how I love Greek Mythology.
So, I am not familiar with the source material for this retelling (or reimagining, as some have been saying) but as a former Percy Jackson kid, I quite enjoyed it!
Plot: I really liked following along on Psyche's adventures. From first training with Atalanta, to the shores of the Trojan War, to her daring quest to the underworld. And of course, let's not forget Eros's role as a beguiling God of desire cursed to love a mortal. Their love story was sweet and slow and had a lovely little happily ever after.
Characters: Psyche does fall into the "fierce warrior woman" trope, but I found her desire to carve out her own fate and not have it be dictated by the norms of society or those around her honorable. I do think she stood out more to me than Eros, whose story more seemed to provide the narrative structure for Psyche's tale to be told.
Pacing: This was a moderately paced book that felt fairly consistent throughout.
Overall: I would recommend to those who want a Greek Myth inspired love story with plenty of adventure!
Content warnings: murder, mentions of sexual assault
————————————————
So excited to start this one! Thank you to the publishers for the ARC (:
So, I am not familiar with the source material for this retelling (or reimagining, as some have been saying) but as a former Percy Jackson kid, I quite enjoyed it!
Plot: I really liked following along on Psyche's adventures. From first training with Atalanta, to the shores of the Trojan War, to her daring quest to the underworld. And of course, let's not forget Eros's role as a beguiling God of desire cursed to love a mortal. Their love story was sweet and slow and had a lovely little happily ever after.
Characters: Psyche does fall into the "fierce warrior woman" trope, but I found her desire to carve out her own fate and not have it be dictated by the norms of society or those around her honorable. I do think she stood out more to me than Eros, whose story more seemed to provide the narrative structure for Psyche's tale to be told.
Pacing: This was a moderately paced book that felt fairly consistent throughout.
Overall: I would recommend to those who want a Greek Myth inspired love story with plenty of adventure!
Content warnings: murder, mentions of sexual assault
————————————————
So excited to start this one! Thank you to the publishers for the ARC (:
June 6, 2025
"Ние сме отговорни за това, което създаваме!".
Доста интересен преразказ на мита за Ерос и Психея, авторката си е поиграла с вариациите на митовете за раждането на двамата герой, историята е сладка, и се чете много бързо.
Бях позабравила някой части от митовете за тях двамата, но историята им беше глътка свеж въздух след издаваните напоследък книги.
Доста интересен преразказ на мита за Ерос и Психея, авторката си е поиграла с вариациите на митовете за раждането на двамата герой, историята е сладка, и се чете много бързо.
Бях позабравила някой части от митовете за тях двамата, но историята им беше глътка свеж въздух след издаваните напоследък книги.
October 11, 2023
TW//
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book, but I think I overall enjoyed it. It was really messy and it had the potential to be a lot better, but it brought some great life to a Greek myth that not everyone knows about.
Psyche and Eros had a terrible opening. There’s no other word for it. The first 20% or so of the book was covering about 18 years in Psyche’s life and thousands of years in Eros’ life. It read like info-dumping at times and a lot of that first 20% of the book wasn’t super relevant to the story. If I had been a historian who wanted to know every detail of this section of Greek history, maybe the start of the book would’ve been interesting, but for the casual reader like myself, this first section of the book is a drag to get through. It would’ve drastically improved the story if the book got rid of all that backstory and instead started at the action, specifically when Eros got impaled by his own arrow.
The middle section of the book starting after the arrow incident was really good. I especially liked every moment when Psyche and Eros were together. While I wasn’t super fond of each of them individually, their talks and their chemistry were really well written. Psyche’s stubborness and daring with Eros’ kind soul and protective heart made for a fun combination.
I also found that the settings in the middle of the book were amazing. The seaside house was my favorite location they spent time at. The seaside house was described so well that I could picture it as if I was sitting in the house. It had unique magic as well that captivated me from start to finish.
The trials were fun in their own unique way. They weren’t my favorite part of the book, but I flew through the trials. They were paced pretty well and I even found myself nervous about whether Psyche would be able to complete them or not. This nervousness shocked me because I had initially found the first section of the book to be so boring that I thought for sure I’d rate the book one star. However, some way along Psyche’s journey, I found that I had begun to care for Psyche.
The ending then ruined my last moments with this book. It quickly rushed through several years of the characters' lives when it should’ve ended sooner, but the most frustrating part of the ending for me was that Psyche all of a sudden lost her powerful and stubborn nature for no reason. Her powerfulness and stubborness were two of the key features of her characterization. To have those all of a sudden disppear for seemingly no reason irritated me. If it had been a gradual disappearance of those traits, it would’ve made a lot more sense but her personality change felt very abrupt.
I appreciated how this book portrayed some of the characters from Greek myth. This version of Hekate, Persephone, Medusa, and Demeter were some of my favorite depictions of them that I have ever read. Luna McNamara did a great job as well with shining light on lesser gods that don’t get as much attention in modern Greek myth stories. Zephyrus in particular was really fun to read about in this story. I would love a whole novel focusing on his romance.
Despite having so many things about this book that I enjoyed, I have one final criticism of it - the story would’ve benefited from more Eros chapters. Eros’ chapters are prevalent in the start and end of the book, but they’re basically nonexistent for the large middle section of the book. A few sections here and there describing his miserable circumstances would’ve helped balance out all of Psyche’s chapters.
My thoughts on this book are a bit all over the place, so it was hard for me to settle on a rating at first, but I think three stars is fairly accurate. It had lots of good moments, but it also had tons of flaws. This book is great for Madeline Miller fans and hardcore Greek mythology fans. However, if you don’t fit into either of those groups, you should skip this one and instead spend your time reading better books.
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book, but I think I overall enjoyed it. It was really messy and it had the potential to be a lot better, but it brought some great life to a Greek myth that not everyone knows about.
Psyche and Eros had a terrible opening. There’s no other word for it. The first 20% or so of the book was covering about 18 years in Psyche’s life and thousands of years in Eros’ life. It read like info-dumping at times and a lot of that first 20% of the book wasn’t super relevant to the story. If I had been a historian who wanted to know every detail of this section of Greek history, maybe the start of the book would’ve been interesting, but for the casual reader like myself, this first section of the book is a drag to get through. It would’ve drastically improved the story if the book got rid of all that backstory and instead started at the action, specifically when Eros got impaled by his own arrow.
The middle section of the book starting after the arrow incident was really good. I especially liked every moment when Psyche and Eros were together. While I wasn’t super fond of each of them individually, their talks and their chemistry were really well written. Psyche’s stubborness and daring with Eros’ kind soul and protective heart made for a fun combination.
I also found that the settings in the middle of the book were amazing. The seaside house was my favorite location they spent time at. The seaside house was described so well that I could picture it as if I was sitting in the house. It had unique magic as well that captivated me from start to finish.
The trials were fun in their own unique way. They weren’t my favorite part of the book, but I flew through the trials. They were paced pretty well and I even found myself nervous about whether Psyche would be able to complete them or not. This nervousness shocked me because I had initially found the first section of the book to be so boring that I thought for sure I’d rate the book one star. However, some way along Psyche’s journey, I found that I had begun to care for Psyche.
The ending then ruined my last moments with this book. It quickly rushed through several years of the characters' lives when it should’ve ended sooner, but the most frustrating part of the ending for me was that Psyche all of a sudden lost her powerful and stubborn nature for no reason. Her powerfulness and stubborness were two of the key features of her characterization. To have those all of a sudden disppear for seemingly no reason irritated me. If it had been a gradual disappearance of those traits, it would’ve made a lot more sense but her personality change felt very abrupt.
I appreciated how this book portrayed some of the characters from Greek myth. This version of Hekate, Persephone, Medusa, and Demeter were some of my favorite depictions of them that I have ever read. Luna McNamara did a great job as well with shining light on lesser gods that don’t get as much attention in modern Greek myth stories. Zephyrus in particular was really fun to read about in this story. I would love a whole novel focusing on his romance.
Despite having so many things about this book that I enjoyed, I have one final criticism of it - the story would’ve benefited from more Eros chapters. Eros’ chapters are prevalent in the start and end of the book, but they’re basically nonexistent for the large middle section of the book. A few sections here and there describing his miserable circumstances would’ve helped balance out all of Psyche’s chapters.
My thoughts on this book are a bit all over the place, so it was hard for me to settle on a rating at first, but I think three stars is fairly accurate. It had lots of good moments, but it also had tons of flaws. This book is great for Madeline Miller fans and hardcore Greek mythology fans. However, if you don’t fit into either of those groups, you should skip this one and instead spend your time reading better books.
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
November 24, 2022
this was such a fun time. full RTC
July 16, 2023
Psyche and Eros by Luna McNamara
Reimagined mythology.
The god of love falls in love with a mortal, but under a curse, if she ever sees him in his true form, they will forever be parted.
It’s part love story, part tragedy in a retelling of the current fantasy type of storytelling.
Cruelty, betrayal, love, sacrifice, trickery, war, multiple names/identities.
All the standard fair of the mythology expectations.
Yes, I listened and enjoyed the love story and cried at their separation but was the lie worth the impact? Mythology isn’t a favorite of mine.
Following their stories, it’s too much tragedy and trickery for me.
I received a copy of this from the publisher.
Reimagined mythology.
The god of love falls in love with a mortal, but under a curse, if she ever sees him in his true form, they will forever be parted.
It’s part love story, part tragedy in a retelling of the current fantasy type of storytelling.
Cruelty, betrayal, love, sacrifice, trickery, war, multiple names/identities.
All the standard fair of the mythology expectations.
Yes, I listened and enjoyed the love story and cried at their separation but was the lie worth the impact? Mythology isn’t a favorite of mine.
Following their stories, it’s too much tragedy and trickery for me.
I received a copy of this from the publisher.
April 10, 2023
ARC provided by Edelweiss for booksellers.
Oh man.
I had quite a few qualms with this book; mainly stemming from the fact that I’ve studied mythology for so long and the RANDOM changes to the myths made?no?sense? Why were these things necessary and what actual purpose did they serve?
The most important thing to me personally in the way a novel is written is the prose, and this didn’t check any of my boxes. It was simplistic, borderline childish, and I don’t think it did the subject matter justice.
This was not a BAD story. But it unfortunately was never going to work for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
dnfs
October 2, 2023dnfed @ 10%
I fear most authors don’t have the range to write mythology retellings
I fear most authors don’t have the range to write mythology retellings
Read
July 24, 2023Full disclosure. I stopped halfway through.
So, you want kind of an Ancient Greek swash-buckling empowered woman/man who isn't into toxic masculinity love story? This book is for you. You will root for them!
You want something like Madeleine Miller's character studies revealing everything the text touches? Don't go into this expecting that.
This book is a love story, told in a his story/her story kind of thing. The narrative arc is:
I am Psyche! I am a tomboy (no) princess (ok) only child (nope). Atalanta herself trained me (hard no). At the ripe old age of approximately 11 I figured out that marriage is for tossers! All women are boring and men are just dicks. I'm going to be a hero because the Oracle of Delphi said I would be (no it didn't).
I am Eros. I'm a dick. I was foul-tempered and salty within seconds of creation. I drip scorn at every turn. And like a one-trick pony on a bad day, I decided early on that love stinks and I'm not performing that trick anymore. Gosh I sure hope I don't fall in love. That would be like getting shot by irony's arrow? GET IT?
(I just realized while reading this that he's a lot like an Edward Cullen character? He's only dreamy if you're into self-centered creepy jerks. If Eros and Psyche were set in modern times, Eros would TOTALLY be driving a Volvo.)
It just falls into these classic tropes so quickly I ended up feeling like, by chapter 10, that they need to fight crime together. But the way this is written, the trials of Eros and Psyche are exactly that! As they start their true character arcs, the author sprinkles the greatest hits of Ancient Greece in randomly around them. What's that, Psyche chilling with the women at Helen of Troy's first (natch) wedding and getting trained by Atalanta? Oh hey, did Prometheus just swing by before a date with the eagles to drink a cup of Ambrosia in Eros's fortress of solitude? Did Psyche seriously just say rosy-fingered-dawn had only just started as though we needed more of an homage to Homer translations?
It's also absolutely saturated with similes and metaphors. Desire spread like wildfire among the mortals and love grew like a weed. Don't weeds burn in wildfires? Did you know that Helen is a swan but Penelope is a duck? Stop overthinking it, reader, and lose yourself in the story!
Alas, I couldn't stop overthinking it. So this book is for someone but it's not for me.
So, you want kind of an Ancient Greek swash-buckling empowered woman/man who isn't into toxic masculinity love story? This book is for you. You will root for them!
You want something like Madeleine Miller's character studies revealing everything the text touches? Don't go into this expecting that.
This book is a love story, told in a his story/her story kind of thing. The narrative arc is:
I am Psyche! I am a tomboy (no) princess (ok) only child (nope). Atalanta herself trained me (hard no). At the ripe old age of approximately 11 I figured out that marriage is for tossers! All women are boring and men are just dicks. I'm going to be a hero because the Oracle of Delphi said I would be (no it didn't).
I am Eros. I'm a dick. I was foul-tempered and salty within seconds of creation. I drip scorn at every turn. And like a one-trick pony on a bad day, I decided early on that love stinks and I'm not performing that trick anymore. Gosh I sure hope I don't fall in love. That would be like getting shot by irony's arrow? GET IT?
(I just realized while reading this that he's a lot like an Edward Cullen character? He's only dreamy if you're into self-centered creepy jerks. If Eros and Psyche were set in modern times, Eros would TOTALLY be driving a Volvo.)
It just falls into these classic tropes so quickly I ended up feeling like, by chapter 10, that they need to fight crime together. But the way this is written, the trials of Eros and Psyche are exactly that! As they start their true character arcs, the author sprinkles the greatest hits of Ancient Greece in randomly around them. What's that, Psyche chilling with the women at Helen of Troy's first (natch) wedding and getting trained by Atalanta? Oh hey, did Prometheus just swing by before a date with the eagles to drink a cup of Ambrosia in Eros's fortress of solitude? Did Psyche seriously just say rosy-fingered-dawn had only just started as though we needed more of an homage to Homer translations?
It's also absolutely saturated with similes and metaphors. Desire spread like wildfire among the mortals and love grew like a weed. Don't weeds burn in wildfires? Did you know that Helen is a swan but Penelope is a duck? Stop overthinking it, reader, and lose yourself in the story!
Alas, I couldn't stop overthinking it. So this book is for someone but it's not for me.
December 28, 2023
Okay so.... two illustrative things from related media.
First: Kpop group Le Sserafim released a song this year called Eve Psyche and the Bluebeard's Wife. Sonically, it's one of my favorite songs from 2023 but content wise... other than a few lines here and some bits of symbolism in the MV, it has nothing at all to do with the myths reference in the title. It was kind of disappointing, because Kpop can go all out with the allusions, but they didn't in this case. All that being said, the song has more to do with the Cupid and Psyche myth than McNamara's book.
Second: On this podcast, McNamara gets into the creative process behind this book and there are some, er, enlightening moments. For example, the beginning of the book has Eros talking about how there's three words for love in Greek. In reality there are more, but McNamara decided to leave out storge, for example, because she believed it to be about obedience/devotion and that's repressive. The reality of the term is more complicated than that, but if you did run with that interpretation I still think you could have that interpretation tie into the wider themes of this book. Such as they were. It might have taken a little bit of striving but not that much in my opinion. For example, it's often compared to a natural loves that springs up via a parents' love for their child. This Psyche has a loving storge-ish relationship with her parents, and there could have been a compare/contrast between her and her parents versus the servitude going on with Aphrodite and Eros.
(The author also says she prefers ancient Greece to ancient Rome because the Romans were colonizers and. Um. )
*
Yeah, there's a nitpick-y review welling up in me, clearly. Here's the thing though... This is one of my favorite myths of all time. It's weird, fairy tale-like, a prototype for a lot of romance novel tropes (downtrodden virtuous heroine? bad boy falls in love?? comically evil mother in law???) and more than a little sexy. I felt like I was getting away with something when I read the story in our middle school ancient Greek mythology class haha. It doesn't get nearly as many adaptations as Hades/Persephone, or even Penelope/Odysseus (another popular pairing albeit totally human.) So I come to books about this myth with a lot of excitement but also high expectations. I can't help it!
And to be honest... it's probably best to set aside any expectations of Cupid and Psyche, and just read it as a Greek myth flavored coming of age story. Here are common elements of the story that are completely absent or totally changed in McNamara's Psyche and Eros:
Listen... I'm not against changing a lot of the plot beats of a story, or even its themes. Till We Have Faces does both (with the same myth, even!) and it's one of my favorite books ever. However, there are reasons for what it does. For example, Lewis changes things so Psyche is loved by her oldest sister (and the narrator of the book) and that said sister is not able to see the palace Psyche lives in. From this, he's able to explore themes of faith and obsessive/toxic love.
In contrast... Ugh, not to harp on the author of this one too much, but there's just such a strong sense that McNamara wants to 'fix' the original myth. In the podcast I linked, she talks about how disturbing it was to read the original story and have the narrator bemoaning that Psyche was about to lose her virginity (rather than having any thought for the real girl and her terror.) OK. Great. Genuinely great! There are so many myths that leave me like "but what! was! the woman! feeling!"
But the solution shouldn't be "well I'll give her a knife and a bow and arrow and have her able to kill things real good."
You could explore themes with this and there's a vague attempt at this. Psyche sort of muses that heroism isn't just being able to fight things and sometimes the heroes of the past were bad people. But it's all too muddled and, honestly, a little too late. And it just comes across as yet another way to "fix" the original myth. If you spend any time with Greek mythology at all, you'll find that heroism has less to do with virtue/compassion, and more to do with being able to do impressive stuff. That can be jarring to a modern audience, and there are ways to engage with it in a believable way so you have someone with that mindset coming around to a different point of view. But I feel like you need to have some sort of ... baseline understanding of why that ethos developed in the first place. There are practical reasons ancient Greeks would value hospitality and feats of strength (you kind of need the latter to put food on the table, for one, or drive away wild animals killing your flocks.) Like with storge, it's not always repressive and terrible and in need of a wholesale fix.
Lewis's book also makes a female character into a warrior, by the way, when there's no indication of it in the original. Orual becomes the reigning queen of their little kingdom. She's able to fight with a sword and even participates in wars. Some of it is so that people see her as a leader despite her gender. Part of it is natural affinity. There are in-universe upsides and downsides to her having this ability, and they ultimately tie into the book's themes in a way that enriches it. After she loses her sister, Orual devotes all of her obsessive love tendencies into ruling a kingdom well. That includes partaking in its battles. There's a reason for it. I was never convinced there was a narrative reason for this Psyche to be a warrior other than 'somehow in the year 2023 we know she's a feminist because she can fight with a sword, hates the idea of an arranged marriage to an old man, and is bad at (wait for it) weaving.'
Just... like... here's the thing. Like I said before, Cupid and Psyche is a weird sexy little tale. Like with Hades and Persephone, there's offputting stuff you really can't look past. Persephone gets abducted. Psyche goes through the terror of thinking she's going to be a human sacrifice, only to find herself married to someone she doesn't know and can't see and who has sex with her that very night. It's all the epitome of plot points you wouldn't want to happen to you or anyone in real life but can be weirdly thrilling in fiction if you're into that kind of thing. This myth is seen as the precursor to stuff like Beauty and the Beast, which is another example of a romance where you either get its appeal to the id or you don't.
Furthermore, as other reviewers point out, Psyche is one of of those rare mythical female figures who goes through a whole hero's journey without once doing combat.
It just really feels like... restoring agency to a character like that involves getting inside her head. It doesn't involve rewriting the whole story so that everything is unobjectionable and unproblematic and there's never a hint of ancient ways of thinking other than from characters we already know to hate like Aphrodite or Agamemnon (seriously WHY IS HE HERE???) And yes that does involve including the palpable eroticism of the original story, imo (somehow Lewis kinda managed it and he did it in a Christian allegory ffs.) If you don't want to engage with any of that, then just adapt a different story. And when you adapt it, your changes should work with the story rather than fighting against it for....... being a tale from an ancient era.
This is getting long so I'll do another list.
Some stuff I liked:
-Eros's POV was actually pretty fun a lot of the time. His first chapter or so is infodump about his whole life, but once he's able to do stuff he has a fun perspective
-Hated the Trojan war part, but it was kind of refreshing to get Iphigenia here as a person rather than a flawless sacrificial lamb
-Eros being the primordial Eros, and he's made Aphrodite's adopted son/slave so the Olympians can control his power. Genuinely an interesting choice! Wish it had been developed more...
Other stuff I hated:
-Seriously there is no chemistry or sexiness or anything at all to this take on the main couple. It would be like retelling Ariadne and Dionysus and making them kind of sound like a post on "why get married if you hate your spouse" hahaha like someone would do that OH WAIT.
-Eros's house is way less of a gothic manor and more of a cutesy cottagecore situation. Honestly that sentence more than anything spells out everything jarring about this book.
-The whole deal with Psyche being the princess of Mycenae. It's kind of jarring because it's written like an early modern monarchy, rather than the king being more of a high kind over lesser kings. I think it's like this to add some additional drama when Pysche becomes pregnant a la the myth but nothing really comes of it.
- Me, staring into the camera whenever she would talk about "latin poets would later say" or "later this would come to be known as the bronze age collapse." I don't HATE this sort of looking to the future... it's done pretty well in books like Lavinia and The Silence of the Girls but I don't see what purpose it served here.
-Psyche knowing what adrenal glands are???
-So, we're going to try and do justice to a female character (that really has always had a good rep all things considered) but we're just going to do what everyone tends to do with Aphrodite, and Clytemnestra, and Hera, and Helen and the list goes on.
-The plot had no idea what it was doing with Zephyrus. Is he shady or not?
-Do you not like Cupid and Psyche, but like another myth? You're in luck! The book will find a way to tie them in to this story!
-Do you not know how one of those myths ends but are kind of curious? The story will tell you. For example, Electra basically calmly predicts how the entire Oresteia cycle will go and I tear my hair out.
Just kinda funny:
-The author dislikes ancient Rome but goes with Roman versions of these myths more often than not. For example, Medusa shows up and has the Ovid-style backstory of being a rape victim that was punished.
Yes, I know I can get really bitchy in my reviews for mythology retellings. This is because these stories genuinely matter so much to me. The Eros and Psyche myth has a pivotal moment in which Psyche uses a lamp to see what's lurking there in the darkness and she uncovers all the beauty and terror she couldn't see before. That's what I'm looking for in retellings; illuminating all the stuff that lay hidden before. So many of these retellings feel like lighting a lamp and finding nothing there at all.
First: Kpop group Le Sserafim released a song this year called Eve Psyche and the Bluebeard's Wife. Sonically, it's one of my favorite songs from 2023 but content wise... other than a few lines here and some bits of symbolism in the MV, it has nothing at all to do with the myths reference in the title. It was kind of disappointing, because Kpop can go all out with the allusions, but they didn't in this case. All that being said, the song has more to do with the Cupid and Psyche myth than McNamara's book.
Second: On this podcast, McNamara gets into the creative process behind this book and there are some, er, enlightening moments. For example, the beginning of the book has Eros talking about how there's three words for love in Greek. In reality there are more, but McNamara decided to leave out storge, for example, because she believed it to be about obedience/devotion and that's repressive. The reality of the term is more complicated than that, but if you did run with that interpretation I still think you could have that interpretation tie into the wider themes of this book. Such as they were. It might have taken a little bit of striving but not that much in my opinion. For example, it's often compared to a natural loves that springs up via a parents' love for their child. This Psyche has a loving storge-ish relationship with her parents, and there could have been a compare/contrast between her and her parents versus the servitude going on with Aphrodite and Eros.
(The author also says she prefers ancient Greece to ancient Rome because the Romans were colonizers and. Um. )
*
Yeah, there's a nitpick-y review welling up in me, clearly. Here's the thing though... This is one of my favorite myths of all time. It's weird, fairy tale-like, a prototype for a lot of romance novel tropes (downtrodden virtuous heroine? bad boy falls in love?? comically evil mother in law???) and more than a little sexy. I felt like I was getting away with something when I read the story in our middle school ancient Greek mythology class haha. It doesn't get nearly as many adaptations as Hades/Persephone, or even Penelope/Odysseus (another popular pairing albeit totally human.) So I come to books about this myth with a lot of excitement but also high expectations. I can't help it!
And to be honest... it's probably best to set aside any expectations of Cupid and Psyche, and just read it as a Greek myth flavored coming of age story. Here are common elements of the story that are completely absent or totally changed in McNamara's Psyche and Eros:
Listen... I'm not against changing a lot of the plot beats of a story, or even its themes. Till We Have Faces does both (with the same myth, even!) and it's one of my favorite books ever. However, there are reasons for what it does. For example, Lewis changes things so Psyche is loved by her oldest sister (and the narrator of the book) and that said sister is not able to see the palace Psyche lives in. From this, he's able to explore themes of faith and obsessive/toxic love.
In contrast... Ugh, not to harp on the author of this one too much, but there's just such a strong sense that McNamara wants to 'fix' the original myth. In the podcast I linked, she talks about how disturbing it was to read the original story and have the narrator bemoaning that Psyche was about to lose her virginity (rather than having any thought for the real girl and her terror.) OK. Great. Genuinely great! There are so many myths that leave me like "but what! was! the woman! feeling!"
But the solution shouldn't be "well I'll give her a knife and a bow and arrow and have her able to kill things real good."
You could explore themes with this and there's a vague attempt at this. Psyche sort of muses that heroism isn't just being able to fight things and sometimes the heroes of the past were bad people. But it's all too muddled and, honestly, a little too late. And it just comes across as yet another way to "fix" the original myth. If you spend any time with Greek mythology at all, you'll find that heroism has less to do with virtue/compassion, and more to do with being able to do impressive stuff. That can be jarring to a modern audience, and there are ways to engage with it in a believable way so you have someone with that mindset coming around to a different point of view. But I feel like you need to have some sort of ... baseline understanding of why that ethos developed in the first place. There are practical reasons ancient Greeks would value hospitality and feats of strength (you kind of need the latter to put food on the table, for one, or drive away wild animals killing your flocks.) Like with storge, it's not always repressive and terrible and in need of a wholesale fix.
Lewis's book also makes a female character into a warrior, by the way, when there's no indication of it in the original. Orual becomes the reigning queen of their little kingdom. She's able to fight with a sword and even participates in wars. Some of it is so that people see her as a leader despite her gender. Part of it is natural affinity. There are in-universe upsides and downsides to her having this ability, and they ultimately tie into the book's themes in a way that enriches it. After she loses her sister, Orual devotes all of her obsessive love tendencies into ruling a kingdom well. That includes partaking in its battles. There's a reason for it. I was never convinced there was a narrative reason for this Psyche to be a warrior other than 'somehow in the year 2023 we know she's a feminist because she can fight with a sword, hates the idea of an arranged marriage to an old man, and is bad at (wait for it) weaving.'
Just... like... here's the thing. Like I said before, Cupid and Psyche is a weird sexy little tale. Like with Hades and Persephone, there's offputting stuff you really can't look past. Persephone gets abducted. Psyche goes through the terror of thinking she's going to be a human sacrifice, only to find herself married to someone she doesn't know and can't see and who has sex with her that very night. It's all the epitome of plot points you wouldn't want to happen to you or anyone in real life but can be weirdly thrilling in fiction if you're into that kind of thing. This myth is seen as the precursor to stuff like Beauty and the Beast, which is another example of a romance where you either get its appeal to the id or you don't.
Furthermore, as other reviewers point out, Psyche is one of of those rare mythical female figures who goes through a whole hero's journey without once doing combat.
It just really feels like... restoring agency to a character like that involves getting inside her head. It doesn't involve rewriting the whole story so that everything is unobjectionable and unproblematic and there's never a hint of ancient ways of thinking other than from characters we already know to hate like Aphrodite or Agamemnon (seriously WHY IS HE HERE???) And yes that does involve including the palpable eroticism of the original story, imo (somehow Lewis kinda managed it and he did it in a Christian allegory ffs.) If you don't want to engage with any of that, then just adapt a different story. And when you adapt it, your changes should work with the story rather than fighting against it for....... being a tale from an ancient era.
This is getting long so I'll do another list.
Some stuff I liked:
-Eros's POV was actually pretty fun a lot of the time. His first chapter or so is infodump about his whole life, but once he's able to do stuff he has a fun perspective
-Hated the Trojan war part, but it was kind of refreshing to get Iphigenia here as a person rather than a flawless sacrificial lamb
-Eros being the primordial Eros, and he's made Aphrodite's adopted son/slave so the Olympians can control his power. Genuinely an interesting choice! Wish it had been developed more...
Other stuff I hated:
-Seriously there is no chemistry or sexiness or anything at all to this take on the main couple. It would be like retelling Ariadne and Dionysus and making them kind of sound like a post on "why get married if you hate your spouse" hahaha like someone would do that OH WAIT.
-Eros's house is way less of a gothic manor and more of a cutesy cottagecore situation. Honestly that sentence more than anything spells out everything jarring about this book.
-The whole deal with Psyche being the princess of Mycenae. It's kind of jarring because it's written like an early modern monarchy, rather than the king being more of a high kind over lesser kings. I think it's like this to add some additional drama when Pysche becomes pregnant a la the myth but nothing really comes of it.
- Me, staring into the camera whenever she would talk about "latin poets would later say" or "later this would come to be known as the bronze age collapse." I don't HATE this sort of looking to the future... it's done pretty well in books like Lavinia and The Silence of the Girls but I don't see what purpose it served here.
-Psyche knowing what adrenal glands are???
-So, we're going to try and do justice to a female character (that really has always had a good rep all things considered) but we're just going to do what everyone tends to do with Aphrodite, and Clytemnestra, and Hera, and Helen and the list goes on.
-The plot had no idea what it was doing with Zephyrus. Is he shady or not?
-Do you not like Cupid and Psyche, but like another myth? You're in luck! The book will find a way to tie them in to this story!
-Do you not know how one of those myths ends but are kind of curious? The story will tell you. For example, Electra basically calmly predicts how the entire Oresteia cycle will go and I tear my hair out.
Just kinda funny:
-The author dislikes ancient Rome but goes with Roman versions of these myths more often than not. For example, Medusa shows up and has the Ovid-style backstory of being a rape victim that was punished.
Yes, I know I can get really bitchy in my reviews for mythology retellings. This is because these stories genuinely matter so much to me. The Eros and Psyche myth has a pivotal moment in which Psyche uses a lamp to see what's lurking there in the darkness and she uncovers all the beauty and terror she couldn't see before. That's what I'm looking for in retellings; illuminating all the stuff that lay hidden before. So many of these retellings feel like lighting a lamp and finding nothing there at all.
June 22, 2023
Whenever I finish a book I’ve enjoyed, I like to peek at some of the more detailed negative reviews to see what the naysayers disliked. I’m always curious: what missed the mark for other readers, while I enjoyed the book? Can I be swayed?
It seems the main objections to this book are that the source materials weren’t word-for-word republished (to which I say: you’re reading a story based on stories. What did you expect, and also why don’t you just re-read the source materials if that’s what you wanted?) and that Psyche has been butched-up and apparently this is “woke” and “misandrist” because it’s bad feminism not to see the inherent gender liberation in traditionally-prescribed femininity. And, sure, it’s maybe a little unsubtle to have your main woman character be a scrappy warrior, but the most-liked negative reviews gave me really weird pick-me trad wife vibes, and that was before anyone dropped any comments about “wokeness.” Women don’t have to be like men to be feminist, but it’s also not unreasonable that plenty of women, when given the freedom to be themselves away from the yoke of the patriarchy, prefer to act in ways that don’t conform to patriarchy’s rules about woman-ness.
Anyway! I enjoyed the story. I thought the blending of sources and myths was fun, and I think folks would do well to remember that novels - even ones purporting to be retelling of ancient myths (themselves stories!!) - are fictional. If you’re losing your cool over authors telling stories that relate to other stories, maybe novels aren’t the way to go. I confess that I'm not a huge consumer of ancient myth (Greek or otherwise) so maybe my nonchalance results in part from that, but I'm really hung up on how upset reviewers are that a fictional book isn't "accurate" as if that means anything at all. Maybe audiences of "based on a [true] story" media need to be less credulous in assuming that fiction is a stand-in for a history lesson, but I'm not convinced the onus is on a novel-writer or film-maker to make sure their audience understands the basic division between fiction and non-fiction.
It seems the main objections to this book are that the source materials weren’t word-for-word republished (to which I say: you’re reading a story based on stories. What did you expect, and also why don’t you just re-read the source materials if that’s what you wanted?) and that Psyche has been butched-up and apparently this is “woke” and “misandrist” because it’s bad feminism not to see the inherent gender liberation in traditionally-prescribed femininity. And, sure, it’s maybe a little unsubtle to have your main woman character be a scrappy warrior, but the most-liked negative reviews gave me really weird pick-me trad wife vibes, and that was before anyone dropped any comments about “wokeness.” Women don’t have to be like men to be feminist, but it’s also not unreasonable that plenty of women, when given the freedom to be themselves away from the yoke of the patriarchy, prefer to act in ways that don’t conform to patriarchy’s rules about woman-ness.
Anyway! I enjoyed the story. I thought the blending of sources and myths was fun, and I think folks would do well to remember that novels - even ones purporting to be retelling of ancient myths (themselves stories!!) - are fictional. If you’re losing your cool over authors telling stories that relate to other stories, maybe novels aren’t the way to go. I confess that I'm not a huge consumer of ancient myth (Greek or otherwise) so maybe my nonchalance results in part from that, but I'm really hung up on how upset reviewers are that a fictional book isn't "accurate" as if that means anything at all. Maybe audiences of "based on a [true] story" media need to be less credulous in assuming that fiction is a stand-in for a history lesson, but I'm not convinced the onus is on a novel-writer or film-maker to make sure their audience understands the basic division between fiction and non-fiction.
Read
August 7, 2025update: it was disappointing and i threw a fit
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the myth of eros and psyche is my favorite myth of all time, i swear to god if this book is disappointing i’m gonna throw a fit
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the myth of eros and psyche is my favorite myth of all time, i swear to god if this book is disappointing i’m gonna throw a fit
January 28, 2024
If I were reading this and knew nothing about Greek mythology, I would have enjoyed it quite a bit. Luna McNamara either chose to ignore or did not do proper research on the intricate relationships between the Greek Gods. This makes it hard to give her credibility in this tale.
However, Psyche and Eros were fun characters; maybe she should have just changed the names.
There were very few sections in this book where utilizing Greek Mythology was necessary for the story. The main parts were the underworld and different plot devices utilizing Mythological creatures and a few iconic personalities. Also, WTF, with that weird Gaia cameo??? So much could have been done with that section, which was completely missed.
If a tale of Psyche is to be written, it should be immensely girl power for one of the only major strength characters that pushed gender role boundaries and was trained by Atalanta. Instead, Psyche becomes more of a less badass Angrboda character (Norse mythology, Loki's main baby momma of some of the greatest badass Norse Mythological creatures). Psyche gets helpless quickly and almost immature in her dealings with other characters, which starts to feel weird.
4 Stars for a base fiction Story
1.5 Stars for a mythological retelling
Left at 2.75 Stars...
However, Psyche and Eros were fun characters; maybe she should have just changed the names.
There were very few sections in this book where utilizing Greek Mythology was necessary for the story. The main parts were the underworld and different plot devices utilizing Mythological creatures and a few iconic personalities. Also, WTF, with that weird Gaia cameo??? So much could have been done with that section, which was completely missed.
If a tale of Psyche is to be written, it should be immensely girl power for one of the only major strength characters that pushed gender role boundaries and was trained by Atalanta. Instead, Psyche becomes more of a less badass Angrboda character (Norse mythology, Loki's main baby momma of some of the greatest badass Norse Mythological creatures). Psyche gets helpless quickly and almost immature in her dealings with other characters, which starts to feel weird.
4 Stars for a base fiction Story
1.5 Stars for a mythological retelling
Left at 2.75 Stars...
July 22, 2023
3.5 rounded up!!
While this was a fun read, it was not deep or thought provoking. It took a very interesting twist and retellings of certain myths
RTC
While this was a fun read, it was not deep or thought provoking. It took a very interesting twist and retellings of certain myths
RTC
April 9, 2024
could not put this motherfucker down omg. all the current criticisms to this book are invalid because no one said a retelling had to be accurate to the original myth at all. IN FACT, i want it to be completely inaccurate so it could read like an original story (did remove a star because romance could have been developed better 😔)
April 19, 2023
3.5 but I rounded it to 4
While many people I've heard; favorite greek mythology story would be Persephone and Hades, mine was always Psyche and Eros. Probably because of a beautiful illustrated children's book I now own of this story but as a child I reread and borrowed from the library more often than any book in my life. I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book.
I thought the author did a phenomenal job of creating and meshing so many characters and stories to make this book. I loved diving into the world of Greek mythology and just sat back and let this author take me on a beautiful adventure.
I loved the vibrant visualization of the story and the Gods and mortals, the world building and character development.
The narrators were fantastic, the dual POV and dual male and female narrators were fantastic and I really enjoyed them. Narrators can make or break a book and these 2 did an amazing job and kept me riveted to the book.
Anyone who wants just a lovely story, would totally enjoy this book.
My one problem was the development between Psyche and Eros seemed "too fast" while everything else seemed to take time and depth, I felt like when Psyche and Eros first were together their feelings for each other and their in-house story came about too fast and then when they were torn apart then things slowed down again.
Other than that I loved the book, the overall story was beautifully written and I enjoyed it!
Sexual Content: moderate/heavy
Language: mild
Drugs/Alcohol: mild
Violence: moderate/heavy
LGBTQ: yes
*Thank you to Netgalley and William Morrow & Company for this ARC audiobook*
While many people I've heard; favorite greek mythology story would be Persephone and Hades, mine was always Psyche and Eros. Probably because of a beautiful illustrated children's book I now own of this story but as a child I reread and borrowed from the library more often than any book in my life. I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book.
I thought the author did a phenomenal job of creating and meshing so many characters and stories to make this book. I loved diving into the world of Greek mythology and just sat back and let this author take me on a beautiful adventure.
I loved the vibrant visualization of the story and the Gods and mortals, the world building and character development.
The narrators were fantastic, the dual POV and dual male and female narrators were fantastic and I really enjoyed them. Narrators can make or break a book and these 2 did an amazing job and kept me riveted to the book.
Anyone who wants just a lovely story, would totally enjoy this book.
My one problem was the development between Psyche and Eros seemed "too fast" while everything else seemed to take time and depth, I felt like when Psyche and Eros first were together their feelings for each other and their in-house story came about too fast and then when they were torn apart then things slowed down again.
Other than that I loved the book, the overall story was beautifully written and I enjoyed it!
Sexual Content: moderate/heavy
Language: mild
Drugs/Alcohol: mild
Violence: moderate/heavy
LGBTQ: yes
*Thank you to Netgalley and William Morrow & Company for this ARC audiobook*
July 25, 2023
One of my favorite books of all time is Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, which is a retelling of this very myth. Psyche and Eros couldn’t be more different in tone and telling, and yet I thoroughly enjoyed this iteration, as well. McNamara made some interesting choices in terms of setting and character inclusion that baffled me a bit, but her style was easy and engaging and a lot of fun to read.
This is one of my favorite Greek myths, as it’s one of the few where the female is the hero in her own tale and wins her own happy ending. She fights for it, and hard, but she does see victory in the end. I thought that McNamara presented it very well. The romance was fun and sweet with just the right amount of tension for the story to really work. Psyche is a strong character, and even though she is not generally a warrior in classic tellings of the tale, I thought her ferocity balanced well with her kindness, and both worked beautifully for the story. Eros was presented as more likable and fleshed-out that is typical, which I appreciated, as well. And I love how thoroughly the author embraced the magic of the time and place.
The things that threw me were largely the timeline and family ties. McNamara decided to have this tale take place at the same time as the prelude to and beginning of the Trojan War, which made the story feel a bit too jam-packed with important characters. Agamemnon and Menelaus were given a third brother, who became Psyche’s father, and all three were the sons of Perseus in this tale instead of Atreus. Penelope was Helen’s sister instead of cousin, and Clytemnestra became merely the surly sister-in-law. It was weird for me, and took me out of the story a bit. McNamara explains her decision in the afterword, but I think this book would work best if you could divorce yourself from what you know of Greek myth and enter the story as a clean slate, so to speak.
The writing of this book was excellent, but in a far different way than Circe or Clytemnestra or weightier books in the Greek myth retelling world. Psyche and Eros is an incredibly fast, easy read, one that felt young adult or new adult, but in the best of ways. It was all about the story, not about the prose or the philosophy or the emotion. It was a compelling story very well told, and that was all it needed to be.
I very much enjoyed this book, even though some of the writing decisions tossed me out of the story for a while. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re less familiar with Greek mythology, or if you’re looking for a fun, fast read. I’ll definitely be reading more of McNamara’s work!
This is one of my favorite Greek myths, as it’s one of the few where the female is the hero in her own tale and wins her own happy ending. She fights for it, and hard, but she does see victory in the end. I thought that McNamara presented it very well. The romance was fun and sweet with just the right amount of tension for the story to really work. Psyche is a strong character, and even though she is not generally a warrior in classic tellings of the tale, I thought her ferocity balanced well with her kindness, and both worked beautifully for the story. Eros was presented as more likable and fleshed-out that is typical, which I appreciated, as well. And I love how thoroughly the author embraced the magic of the time and place.
The things that threw me were largely the timeline and family ties. McNamara decided to have this tale take place at the same time as the prelude to and beginning of the Trojan War, which made the story feel a bit too jam-packed with important characters. Agamemnon and Menelaus were given a third brother, who became Psyche’s father, and all three were the sons of Perseus in this tale instead of Atreus. Penelope was Helen’s sister instead of cousin, and Clytemnestra became merely the surly sister-in-law. It was weird for me, and took me out of the story a bit. McNamara explains her decision in the afterword, but I think this book would work best if you could divorce yourself from what you know of Greek myth and enter the story as a clean slate, so to speak.
The writing of this book was excellent, but in a far different way than Circe or Clytemnestra or weightier books in the Greek myth retelling world. Psyche and Eros is an incredibly fast, easy read, one that felt young adult or new adult, but in the best of ways. It was all about the story, not about the prose or the philosophy or the emotion. It was a compelling story very well told, and that was all it needed to be.
I very much enjoyed this book, even though some of the writing decisions tossed me out of the story for a while. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re less familiar with Greek mythology, or if you’re looking for a fun, fast read. I’ll definitely be reading more of McNamara’s work!
July 17, 2023
Who doesn’t love Greek mythology? I know I sure do!
Psyche and Eros (Cupid, in Roman mythology) is such an interesting story, especially this one. Luna McNamara is incredibly knowledgeable on Greek mythology and it’s very blatant with how she depicts the characters in this story.
I was enraptured by the “antagonist” of the story, Aphrodite, because as everyone knows, Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty and so I thought her character would be sweet and kind but now I’m wondering if that was McNamara’s intent… Persephone is known as the Queen of the Dead and of course, goddess of the underworld but her character was also not what I expected, especially because she’s the daughter of Demeter… I was expecting Persephone to be somewhat kind, like the seasons spring and summer she represents for half the year? I don’t know….
Eros is the god of desire and I’m surprised that even after the curse was lifted from him and Psyche, their love wasn’t tainted. Now, Psyche did have a lot of enemies but even more allies (which I thought was so cute as they were helping her with her tasks to become a priestess to Aphrodite just to get Eros back). I guess I wasn’t expecting them to want to love each other after, he seemed like a playboy… As only a Greek god can be I guess, lol.
Overall, I really enjoyed this story and hope to see something similar from McNamara again!
Psyche and Eros (Cupid, in Roman mythology) is such an interesting story, especially this one. Luna McNamara is incredibly knowledgeable on Greek mythology and it’s very blatant with how she depicts the characters in this story.
I was enraptured by the “antagonist” of the story, Aphrodite, because as everyone knows, Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty and so I thought her character would be sweet and kind but now I’m wondering if that was McNamara’s intent… Persephone is known as the Queen of the Dead and of course, goddess of the underworld but her character was also not what I expected, especially because she’s the daughter of Demeter… I was expecting Persephone to be somewhat kind, like the seasons spring and summer she represents for half the year? I don’t know….
Eros is the god of desire and I’m surprised that even after the curse was lifted from him and Psyche, their love wasn’t tainted. Now, Psyche did have a lot of enemies but even more allies (which I thought was so cute as they were helping her with her tasks to become a priestess to Aphrodite just to get Eros back). I guess I wasn’t expecting them to want to love each other after, he seemed like a playboy… As only a Greek god can be I guess, lol.
Overall, I really enjoyed this story and hope to see something similar from McNamara again!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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September 7, 2023Me ha gustado pero es la típica novela mitológica donde los protagonistas
comparten trama con decenas de historias
dentro de la suya propia.
Con su proporción de cuento de hadas y su final poco habitual en las historias de mitos griegos, Psique y Eros nunca fue de mis historias favoritas, pues prefiero el caos y que todo lo estropeen las deidades mayores, pues suena poco lógico un final feliz. Pero leerlo de manera más extensa y entrelazada con el resto de mitos ha sido una buena experiencia.
Si te gusta la mitología, te lo recomiendo mucho.
comparten trama con decenas de historias
dentro de la suya propia.
Con su proporción de cuento de hadas y su final poco habitual en las historias de mitos griegos, Psique y Eros nunca fue de mis historias favoritas, pues prefiero el caos y que todo lo estropeen las deidades mayores, pues suena poco lógico un final feliz. Pero leerlo de manera más extensa y entrelazada con el resto de mitos ha sido una buena experiencia.
Si te gusta la mitología, te lo recomiendo mucho.
October 8, 2023
Eros Y Psique es mi mito griego favorito, fue una delicia leer esta re interpretación.
June 12, 2023
Ebook provided by Edelweiss+ and William Morrow.
Unfortunately this book was a great disappointment and I couldn’t keep reading it. I DNFed it and the reasons are various.
It’s presented as a retelling of Eros and Psyche, a myth and a famous novel written by Apuleius that I’ve read this year and studied at school years ago. As an amateur of Greek and Roman mythology, I couldn’t wait to start this retelling, not aware that everything differs from the original myth or, in general, from mythology itself.
Psyche is introduced to the reader as a soon-to-be hero, she doesn’t have sisters, and if in the original tale she’s the daughter of unknown royals, in this book she’s the princess of Mycenae and she’s even related to Agamemnon and Menelaus. Not to mention the historical periods that are completely wrong and used only to bring up characters such as Achilles, Patroclus, Clytemnestra, Elena, etc… They have nothing to do with Psyche and Eros since their historical time doesn’t match with the Trojan War period.
But I’m not an expert, I’m only focusing on the things that stood out while reading the book. Things that unnerved me a lot. Writing a retelling means telling a certain story again or sharing a new version of it. But this time, the author didn’t simply revisit the original tale, everything was changed, even things that didn’t need to be altered like family ties, myths, and the historical era of some mythological characters. That’s not a retelling. If the the author wanted to write something new and have free will on who and what to write, then a retelling isn’t the right choice to make. Let you inspire from myths, but write your own world, characters, tales, even deities and don’t change important aspects of a people’s culture.
As I said before, I couldn’t finish this book. From the beginning, when Psyche’s character was irremediably changed, I knew that this novel wasn’t for me. Carol Gilligan analysed the myth and described it as the story of the woman against her reification that started with her veneration as a goddess because of her striking beauty. But the changing carried out in Psyche erased the real essence of her character.
Even the writing didn’t live up to my expectations. It proceeded too fast and it didn’t let us emphasise with the characters. They remained flat throughout the percentage of the book I read and there was nothing particular characterising them.
Achilles appears in a quick and useless scene when he has to compete against Psyche and he acts like a bully. The author didn’t give him any depth, his character merely paraded in the story and there was no actual reason for his appearance. The entire scene wasn’t described and it lasted less than two pages. The same thing happened when Psyche, on the advice of Atalanta, haunts and kills a monster. There was no pathos in this sequence, nothing that made me interested in what was about to happen.
I’m so sorry to say that, but if you love Greek mythology, then this book isn’t for you.
Unfortunately this book was a great disappointment and I couldn’t keep reading it. I DNFed it and the reasons are various.
It’s presented as a retelling of Eros and Psyche, a myth and a famous novel written by Apuleius that I’ve read this year and studied at school years ago. As an amateur of Greek and Roman mythology, I couldn’t wait to start this retelling, not aware that everything differs from the original myth or, in general, from mythology itself.
Psyche is introduced to the reader as a soon-to-be hero, she doesn’t have sisters, and if in the original tale she’s the daughter of unknown royals, in this book she’s the princess of Mycenae and she’s even related to Agamemnon and Menelaus. Not to mention the historical periods that are completely wrong and used only to bring up characters such as Achilles, Patroclus, Clytemnestra, Elena, etc… They have nothing to do with Psyche and Eros since their historical time doesn’t match with the Trojan War period.
But I’m not an expert, I’m only focusing on the things that stood out while reading the book. Things that unnerved me a lot. Writing a retelling means telling a certain story again or sharing a new version of it. But this time, the author didn’t simply revisit the original tale, everything was changed, even things that didn’t need to be altered like family ties, myths, and the historical era of some mythological characters. That’s not a retelling. If the the author wanted to write something new and have free will on who and what to write, then a retelling isn’t the right choice to make. Let you inspire from myths, but write your own world, characters, tales, even deities and don’t change important aspects of a people’s culture.
As I said before, I couldn’t finish this book. From the beginning, when Psyche’s character was irremediably changed, I knew that this novel wasn’t for me. Carol Gilligan analysed the myth and described it as the story of the woman against her reification that started with her veneration as a goddess because of her striking beauty. But the changing carried out in Psyche erased the real essence of her character.
Even the writing didn’t live up to my expectations. It proceeded too fast and it didn’t let us emphasise with the characters. They remained flat throughout the percentage of the book I read and there was nothing particular characterising them.
Achilles appears in a quick and useless scene when he has to compete against Psyche and he acts like a bully. The author didn’t give him any depth, his character merely paraded in the story and there was no actual reason for his appearance. The entire scene wasn’t described and it lasted less than two pages. The same thing happened when Psyche, on the advice of Atalanta, haunts and kills a monster. There was no pathos in this sequence, nothing that made me interested in what was about to happen.
I’m so sorry to say that, but if you love Greek mythology, then this book isn’t for you.
May 12, 2023
Vividly bold and unapologetically feminist, Luna McNamara’s sweeping reimagining of Psyche and Eros’ story was a refreshingly insightful and engaging read exploring love in all it’s many guides, that I genuinely didn’t want to end.
First off, I do want to mention that there are quite a few big changes made to Psyche and Eros’ tale both character and plot wise, which you may be disappointed by if you prefer your retellings to stay 100% faithful to the source material. Personally, I actually didn’t mind the changes and really enjoyed the modern take on this classical Greek myth.
I adored McNamara’s lush, vibrant prose and endearingly complex characters-especially Psyche, who quite possibly had the biggest transformation from the original.
Although still a Princess, this version of Psyche is both an only child and an aspiring warrior (thanks to the prophecy at her birth which claims she’ll conquer a monster feared by the gods.)
But what intrigued me most about the changes to Psyche’s background and personality was delving into the societal clash and emotional conflict that Psyche’s unconventional upbringing creates. For though her duty is to marry and give her kingdom male heirs, Psyche yearns only to become a great hero (and preferably one that stays chaste.)
This might not seem all that revolutionary when you consider how many feminist/ female led retellings we’ve seen released in the last few years. However, the unique exploration of the hero’s journey from Psyche’s perspective, and her conflicting thoughts on the true cost of being a hero was really interesting (thanks to some perfectly timed cameos from notable mythological figures such as Medusa, Persephone and Atalanta.) We’re also offered a far more intriguing perspective —that there’s more important things in life than being a hero, and that the violent, callous and fickle nature of the gods is something to be denounced not revered.
Even Eros (a god himself) shows contempt for the selfish (sometimes harmful) games Zeus’ pantheon of Gods partake in (including his disgust and guilt at some of his own questionable decisions.)
I enjoyed Eros’ character arc, though I admit to finding Psyche just a smidge more developed. I did, however, really love Eros’ alternating POV chapters as they allowed us to delve into the thought processes and emotions of the gods, which we don’t always get to do in retellings.
The romance was lighter than I had anticipated but still lovely nonetheless, and the pacing was also quite good considering the amount of info that needed to be conveyed in the opening half of the book.
Overall a fun and thoroughly entertaining read that’s perfect for fans of Madeline Miller and Jennifer Saint.
Also, a huge thank you to Orion Books and Random Things Tours for the physical copy (and also Netgalley for the e-arc.)
First off, I do want to mention that there are quite a few big changes made to Psyche and Eros’ tale both character and plot wise, which you may be disappointed by if you prefer your retellings to stay 100% faithful to the source material. Personally, I actually didn’t mind the changes and really enjoyed the modern take on this classical Greek myth.
I adored McNamara’s lush, vibrant prose and endearingly complex characters-especially Psyche, who quite possibly had the biggest transformation from the original.
Although still a Princess, this version of Psyche is both an only child and an aspiring warrior (thanks to the prophecy at her birth which claims she’ll conquer a monster feared by the gods.)
But what intrigued me most about the changes to Psyche’s background and personality was delving into the societal clash and emotional conflict that Psyche’s unconventional upbringing creates. For though her duty is to marry and give her kingdom male heirs, Psyche yearns only to become a great hero (and preferably one that stays chaste.)
This might not seem all that revolutionary when you consider how many feminist/ female led retellings we’ve seen released in the last few years. However, the unique exploration of the hero’s journey from Psyche’s perspective, and her conflicting thoughts on the true cost of being a hero was really interesting (thanks to some perfectly timed cameos from notable mythological figures such as Medusa, Persephone and Atalanta.) We’re also offered a far more intriguing perspective —that there’s more important things in life than being a hero, and that the violent, callous and fickle nature of the gods is something to be denounced not revered.
Even Eros (a god himself) shows contempt for the selfish (sometimes harmful) games Zeus’ pantheon of Gods partake in (including his disgust and guilt at some of his own questionable decisions.)
I enjoyed Eros’ character arc, though I admit to finding Psyche just a smidge more developed. I did, however, really love Eros’ alternating POV chapters as they allowed us to delve into the thought processes and emotions of the gods, which we don’t always get to do in retellings.
The romance was lighter than I had anticipated but still lovely nonetheless, and the pacing was also quite good considering the amount of info that needed to be conveyed in the opening half of the book.
Overall a fun and thoroughly entertaining read that’s perfect for fans of Madeline Miller and Jennifer Saint.
Also, a huge thank you to Orion Books and Random Things Tours for the physical copy (and also Netgalley for the e-arc.)
June 9, 2025
Аз съм почитател на древногръцки или римски митове и легенди. И признавам си за този не бях чувала. Ах, каква наслада да го прочета разгърнат в роман. Всичко свързани с любов, душа, съдба и прочее ми е на сърце. Затова Психея и Ерос несъмнено се нареждат сред любимците ми.
“Осъзнах, че никога няма да постигна мечтата си да стана героиня, не защото съм твърде малка за нея, а защото самата мечта бе твърде грозна.”
“Агонията на любовта е това, което прави силата ни толкова могъща. Каква полза от нашата магия, ако всеки глупак можеше да излекува разбитото си сърце?”
“Ние сме отговорни за това, което създаваме.”
“Тогава разбрах, че страстта може да бъде причина за болка, а не за радост. Моите стрели можеха да избуят в наранено сърце, разпространявайки се като инфекция. А може би самата любов е била гнила от самото начало.”
“Осъзнах, че никога няма да постигна мечтата си да стана героиня, не защото съм твърде малка за нея, а защото самата мечта бе твърде грозна.”
“Агонията на любовта е това, което прави силата ни толкова могъща. Каква полза от нашата магия, ако всеки глупак можеше да излекува разбитото си сърце?”
“Ние сме отговорни за това, което създаваме.”
“Тогава разбрах, че страстта може да бъде причина за болка, а не за радост. Моите стрели можеха да избуят в наранено сърце, разпространявайки се като инфекция. А може би самата любов е била гнила от самото начало.”
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