I had an interesting experience with this book, particularly due to the synopsis misleading me. Now I have never read a Natalie Haynes book before. I don't know if this is just a part of her writing style, but Stone Blind was not just Medusa's story. It was Medusa's, her Gorgon sisters, Perseus, Andromeda, Athene—even Hera had a few POV chapters. While I would typically love this incredibly intricate chain of POVs that come together due to the sequences of events of Medusa's story, the synopsis focused pretty solely on Medusa, so I made the assumption that she would be the lead. Granted, assumptions are never good when it comes to reading a book, but I cannot help those expectations when the synopsis tells otherwise. I counted up the chapters that are solely Medusa's before the Perseus/Medusa scene, and there's only six chapters in her name. And most of those chapters involved her doing next to nothing. She felt like a side character at times, and I really didn't enjoy that aspect to this novel.

The most moving scene of this book, in my opinion, is the chapter where Poseidon corners Medusa in Athene's temple. The scene actually cuts before Medusa's rape, but the conversation between the two of them held me enraptured. I couldn't stop listening to the audiobook, and my breath was held inside my chest. It was tense and haunting, and I just wanted to save Medusa. But once this scene concludes, I don't think we get closure, or Medusa doesn't for sure. Maybe that's the point of this story, and I'm being too critical. Medusa never leaves her cave until Perseus comes, and we all know how that ends. Maybe Natalie wanted readers to feel angry and upset about Perseus's cowardly self attacking Medusa in her depression, but I felt like we missed out on a whole part of Medusa's life. Something just feels wrong.

Ultimately, I found most of the other POVs to be quite boring. Athene really annoyed me besides her final few chapters involving Medusa's head. Actually, the ending was incredibly poetic and perfect, but it can't counteract all of the previous chapters that didn't do it for me. I'm pretty sad with my reading experience of this book. I wanted a Medusa retelling that made me cry to my core, and instead, this book just felt "eh" to me besides that chapter between Medusa/Poseidon. This makes me a bit more hesitant in picking up A Thousand Ships, and I need to take a long break from Greek retelling books for sure.