Definitely a quick read, though not necessarily because it was engrossing. The chapters were short and the writing fairly simple, so it was easy to burn through. There were definitely compelling parts of it, but overall I feel like this book over promised and under delivered.

To say it’s heavily entangled with Greek mythology is an overstatement, for example. There are mentions of it, and it does color the narrative in some ways. But I promise, it doesn’t have some complex Mythos to unravel. I think the author attempts to frame the murders as Eleusinian rituals, but kinda falls flat. Ultimately the secret society has VERY little to do with the plot. And any weak attempts to connect the mythology and mystery to the murders is really only based in one thing: that the professor teaches Greek tragedy. That’s it.

With the way the book was described, I expected more secret society shenanigans.

What we got was the story of a haunted woman (which isn’t a bad thing, but not what was promised). She is ultimately a dog with a bone, and no real evidence. Nor does she really collect any significant evidence after she decides to run her own investigation. For almost the entire book, she operates with the same information she’s always had.

The best part of the book was the “runaround.” It was, at times, quite suspenseful. The author managed to cast doubt on several other characters in a way that only the reader could understand, making us fear for the protagonist and her naivety.

And STILL, I was not suspecting the twist. We had multiple red herrings cast suspicion on some other mysterious person, only to be completely blindsided. Well, I was, at least, because there was no real reason to suspect the real culprit until and absolutely BONKERS reveal. And this person went from normal to BATSHIT wild, with everything we and Mariana believed to be true was actually false.

I kind of hated it.

Because narratively speaking, the audience doesn’t really get that catharsis of looking back and seeing what should have been obvious. Because it WASNT. There are only a few flimsy moments that you can look back on and say, “Oh, I guess that makes sense.” But it asks the reader to suspend their disbelief. I’m other words, dude pulled a freaking M. Night Shamalan. Maybe he should make this his next film…

One thing I was grateful for is that I read this (quite literally) on the heels of reading Ariadne. So i got to have some fun aha moments at mentions of Naxos and Demophon and other random things. (Even tho I didn’t care much for that book either