I really enjoyed the concept of this with the Greek mythology aspects, but it could have been executed a lot better. It was trying to talk about love and war and only succeeded at the love part, which was good for most of the book. I think the book would have been better if it either didn't try to talk about war as much or if it went more into depth about war and gave Ares more of a character. However, that wasn't the main problem I had with the book. The ending is really what kept me from rating it higher. There was this build for something tragic happening and something bad did happen, but it wasn't as tragic as the build to that plot point lead me to believe it would be. I also didn't like the explanation for why Aphrodite tells this story. I didn't understand how that explanation would lead to her telling this particular story, which almost supported the opposite outcome, which is what I thought it was going to be before I started the book. I also though Hades' actions at the end of the main story didn't make sense.

I know I've listed a lot of complaints, but I did enjoy the reading experience for the vast majority of the book and read it very quickly. I though the writing is good on a sentence by sentence level and the characters were and relationships between the two couples are believable and easy to get invested in. The story is over dramatic, but it's supposed to be so that didn't bother me. Ultimately, I don't think this is a book that was written to be taken too seriously. It executes a dramatic romance story with a backdrop of WWI and Greek mythology, which is what it was trying to do. I just wanted a little more from it and thought the set up of this book could have lead to a better, more satisfying conclusion.