2.5 stars

I read this book very quickly but I'm left feeling unsatisfied. Daisy Johnson has a beautiful way with words and her descriptions are stunning at times, but the whole novel felt like a strange mixture of being both overworked and underdone. There were many layers to the story but all of them felt fuzzy at the edges. Reading through these other reviews I know I am in the minority, but still, it's the way I feel. Like someone else said, I think it might have been better if I hadn't known what Greek myth it was based on, because I anticipated everything before it happened. And I know it was based on a tragedy, but there was barely a moment of joy the entire way through -- as though we're truly doomed to sadly slog from birth to death. I think it would have been stronger and more complex if she hadn't written it quite so closely to the original myth.

I also found the punctuation very distracting and it ruined my experience of reading it the whole way through. Again, this is probably a personal thing, but the dialogue being written the way it was felt a little pretentious.

Anyway, I actually finished it, (which is saying something! because I don't finish books often these days) and she's a great writer, but I didn't love it.