My one best friend is going to strangle me if I don’t finish this book and send it to her already. I got this with her two years ago and promised to send it. And honestly if it wasn’t for that and being on a nice long break before next Thursday, I would have probably just sent this thing to her without trying to read it. I am a sucker for Greek myths though and I heard this re-telling was good, but honestly it’s just 3.5 stars. Maybe even 3 stars. It dragged a lot and honestly there was nothing really exciting here which makes me sad. I was hoping that this one would be better than the Medusa retelling I I read last year focusing on Medusa’s sister, but eh, it’s really not.
Not too much to say here except most readers I expect know the story of Ariadne. Daughter of a king who falls in love with a f-boi named Theseus. It’s the story of the Minotaur and what Ariadne does and doesn’t do to make sure the man she loves lives. This goes further of course and follows past Ariadne’s introduction and her love of Theseus, but also how she meets and falls in love with a god called Dionysus.
This is told via the first person by Ariadne. I think most of the first part of the book just rushes through the Greek legends as we know them. I think Saint just assumes readers would know about them and not want details or her own spin on them. We get the usual here, Ariadne’s mother being enthralled of a bull because of Poseidon (who freaking sucks) and then how Perseus killed the horrible monster Medusa. It’s through the latter story though that Ariadne finally sees the gods/goddesses for who they are and what she won’t allow to happen to her.
I just didn’t like this story much because Ariadne really doesn’t do much for you to sympathize with. We know she doesn’t care for her father, but it doesn’t feel like she cares for anyone until Theseus. And again, the stories we get about anyone else (such as Medea) felt hollow. But honestly the end of that whole thing came quick and I wondered how was Saint going to stretch the book. Woo boy did she stretch it. The book just goes on and on and on again and I just lost interest in it after a while. Switching to Phaedra in my mind was a mistake. The book switches back and forth so much between them I wonder why this wasn’t hailed as a tale of the two sisters of the Minotaur?
The book eventually ends and it’s not that insightful to me or a great retelling of Ariadne or of Phaedra. Just a tale of two sisters who were fighting over a a supposed hero and didn’t do much to retake their own lives. I think both just kept letting thing happen to them. I am mostly just disappointed with Ariadne since at the beginning of the book she supposedly learned the lessons of Medusa, but not really. Honestly the only one I had sympathy for was Pasiphae.