There is just something magical about taking well known stories with timid, two dimensional women that are little more than plot devices and retelling them with a recast woman that has her own motivations and personality. Even when they’re not perfect, they’re still good.
Plot: Persephone has been playing the biddable daughter to bide her time so she can escape Olympus and its political machinations forever when her mother all but sells her to Zeus to be his new Hera. The problem is that the last three Heras died under mysterious circumstances, so Persephone is understandably in distress over the news. So she runs and slams right into a man all of Olympus has thought dead for decades – Hades. Hades loathes Zeus as much as Persephone does, if not more. So they hatch a plan – she needs a safe place to stay for three months until she gets access to funds to escape Olympus permanently, and they both want to make Zeus suffer. What better way to do that than to bone all over town, showing everyone exactly what Persephone thinks of her engagement to the king of the gods? Shenanigans ensue.
At the end of the day, your mileage is going to vary on how much you buy into the set up for this. Despite Robert going to great lengths to establish the premise and enthusiastic consent, it didn’t ring true for me. I suppose that’s the risk when you pick a genre first and then just to jam your story into it. Telling us that Persephone has options and has chosen this one doesn’t make much sense since she explicitly walked through her options and how much worse the alternatives were to staying with Hades. Surprisingly, sex scenes are all rooted in enthusiastic consent both in advance (like establishing boundaries) and continuously (including after care). But it may have an impact on how well the story as a whole works for you, because I think there were probably better ways to get to the same place (for example, she finds out that Hades is real before heading to the river and chooses to take that risk in the first place, and that she hates Zeus enough that she wants to have her own revenge which aligns with his, rather than positioning sex as the thing Hades gets out of their deal in exchange for keeping her safe). It felt rushed in a way that made much of what came after the basic premise was set up feel unearned and overly dramatic.
Hot as Hades by Alisha Rai still beats this for a Hades/Persephone retelling in my books, but that’s a novella, so if you want to spend more time in Hades’ lair, this is a good (and maybe only?) place to get it.
One final note on format – if you’ve read my reviews, you know I prefer audiobooks. Some have multiple narrators, which makes consistency in voice impossible, in this case, to a point of being distracting. In fact, a third of the way through this book, I had to switch to the ebook – despite the fact that it would be another 4 weeks on the waitlist. This is because Persephone is voiced by a narrator with a very light, gentle, feminine voice which is perfect for Persephone and sounds like the Cookie Monster when she’s trying to do Hades’ lines. Hades is no better, voiced by a narrator with a deep, masculine voice which is perfect for Hades and sounds like Brian’s mother from Life of Brian when he’s trying to do Persephone’s lines.