I'm going to quickly cover my actual review of this book, but then I have a tangent to get into (lol). This rating is not for the romance (although I did enjoy it, it wasn't a 5 star romance). It is for the hope and the love and the peace and the forgiveness that permeates this book. It is about healing from trauma and moving towards a more beautiful future. And that's just what I needed tonight.

“Treachery had been paid back with kindness: such was the rule of the queen of the dead.”

I've been thinking, because of this book, about retellings. The nature of them.

There's a lot of controversy around the Hades and Persephone myth, particularly around the recent-ish trend of retelling it into a romance rather than a violent and brutal rape and kidnapping. So here are my unsolicited two cents:

Hades and Persephone is a story. Persephone is not a real person being talked over and erased with these retellings. It is not injustice against her to give her a happy ending rather than a tragic one.

I see nothing wrong with using a known narrative structure to tell the story you want to tell.

As a sidebar response to one gripe I saw about this book: I do not think the existence of this story implies the author's lack of knowledge of mythology (although, to be honest, I do not require it of her. I do not think an academic knowledge of ancient Greek society is required to be inspired by a well-known story).