brittishliterature's Reviews (222)

Wow. The audiobook is perfection. I’d been skeptical of the hype & didn’t think this book was my type, but I loved it! The story/characters felt so real & my heart felt all of the feels - heartwarming, funny, bittersweet, rough around the edges - I’m so glad I decided to give it a shot. One of those books that will stick with me for a long time & hold a special place in my heart. 

I have mixed feelings about the book overall - it was good but also slow-paced and a bit vague, which made it hard to get into at times.

I would have loved diving deeper into the workings of the dystopian world around the characters, but it was more of an afterthought than a focus.

I also found it a bit anticlimactic. There was always a sense of something tragic and earth-shattering about to come to light - and then nothing happened. To the very end of the book I kept thinking “Ah yes, something major is about to happen, it’s all going to come together” - and then it never did.

It took me a while to get through this book because of the pace and lack of action for me personally. However, what kept me with this book was the exploration of human nature - the themes, insights, and concepts that touch to the heart of being human in the world. I believe it was more about the experience and emotional response the story was trying to elicit in the reader.

From beginning to end, however, Klara had my heart - this book is hers and hers alone.

UPDATE - January 4, 2022:

I am updating my review to say that this is a book I have thought about many times since reading. The initial experience was one thing, but now the way it continues to linger is another. This book has become a favorite of mine.

Got to about Chapter 29, maybe three fourths of the way in. The beginnings of this book were exciting to me to learn about but eventually the audiobook version began to become a droning on of facts that nearly put me to sleep. Very interesting things all throughout but I just couldn’t bring myself to push through the last 1-2 hours just to say I finished the book. 

I really loved the premise/first part of the book: enchanted forest, cottage, dryads, rain and mist, mysterious and lots of potential. However, the second part immediately began to fall flat for me. History and events that deserved time to be explained and understood, connections that felt sudden and disjointed, lack of buildup needed to add weight and importance to what was happening for the reader, and even a little bit of unnecessary creepiness and briefly graphic violence that just felt out of place. The ending felt rushed and distant, and it certainly felt like a lot was missing. 

A well-crafted masterpiece of imagery, prose, mythology, feminism, heartache, strength, the losing and finding of oneself, humanness and the nature of the gods, and of nature’s own forces itself. 

The slow pace was slow for a reason. Miller managed to skillfully piece together a complex narrative spanning generations all in one novel, in a way that was meant to be savored and sat with in time. If there has ever been a work that made me appreciate more highly the stories of Greek mythology, it is this. Circe is a force to be reckoned with, and every page of her story a piece of art.