I loved Medusa and Athene but didn’t care much for Perseus 😂 I really enjoyed this story about the myth of the Gorgons, Hera, Zeus, Poseidon, Danae, and Andromeda, and it made me feel bad for Medusa after she’s raped by Poseidon, who I now hate just as much as Zeus, and then cursed by Athene for it. The quote about monsters and men really resonated with me, as I don’t believe in people are monsters but they can be monstrous. I believe calling someone a monster negates their humanity, and we need to focus on the fact that humans can be inherently dangerous creatures.

I really want to read more by Natalie Haynes now! 

Also, the quote about Medusa missing her pink cyclamens and it made me think of my ones from my Billy and I love them so much 🩷

I really enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. And I need to say something: this book was boring. Boring the sense that this book is such a in the day of a life of ordinary people being human and flawed and scared and stressed and in love and mean and angry and depressed and obsessed and bored with everything.

Sally Rooney is able to poetically write with an insight into a nostalgic feeling of the aestheticism about life and the human condition, our experiences that seem so trivial and yet complex and profound and intense and rough and scary and thought provoking in all its menialness. 

Finding aesthetically pleasing visuals in a spilled glass of water and ice melting on a tiled floor, the smell of rain or grass freshly cut, someone brushing their teeth, or brushing their hair in the mirror. Off kilter photographs and video snippets of memories that give fond vibes you wish you can experience again firsthand. These are the types of things Sally Rooney manages to capture and thus she captivates an aesthetic response in the reader, a never ending kaleidoscope of appreciation for life and love and feeling human.

I found the characters both likeable and unlikeable in their respective ways. Alice had a rough personality, Eileen was emotionally exhausted. I really enjoyed the ending, because it felt like they finally got their lives together by finding their life partners, and finding themselves, they had to go through all the intense and difficult, deep mess that is life in able to find who they’d like the be. They found themselves in their relationships but also found themselves as individuals. 

I enjoyed this enough but it’s not my favourite of the series

I love RedHanded and have been meaning to read their book for years! The audiobook was like listening to a longer version of a podcast episode and I loved it! It summed up their podcast and research perfectly and I hope they do another! 

Another round of short stories! I didn’t know that going in but it was still really good! The last two stories, Sword of Destiny and Something More, were my favourite. Anything with Geralt, Ciri, Yen, and Dandelion. I can’t wait to read the next book and the first novel, Blood of Elves. I already started actually! 

I could never understand how you could treat your daughter the way Gypsy’s mum treated her. It’s just psychotic and I know it’s a sickness but it’s just horrible to hear what Gypsy went through. 

She was kept prisoner in her own home, bound to a wheelchair, and believed she had so many things wrong with her but she didn’t. Part of me wishes she never went to prison, but I don’t condone murder, I just wonder what I would have done to save myself if I were in Gypsy’s position. 

Dee Dee was a sick, sad, desperate woman, and I feel sorry for her but that’s also kind of what she would have wanted and I think she should have been held accountable to her actions, where she ended up in prison and Gypsy didn’t. 

Part of me doesn’t blame Gypsy for begging someone to help her in any way, sacrificing her own body to have her mother killed. 

Part of me thinks she should have been given help not prison time for being the orchestrator. 

In some ways all I see is Gypsy asking for help, though help didn’t need to come in the shape of murder. And a murder so violent as this one. I have seen the crime scene/Dee Dee’s body at the scene as someone interested in true crime I find it very important to have a concrete idea of the scene and situation. It comforts me that Gypsy has not seen these images. I feel like I can bear that weight for her, she doesn’t need to remember her mother like that. She should get to remember the sweeter things about her mother, despite how she was treated by her mother. 

I’m proud Gypsy has experienced so many major life changes in the last year or so since her release. Now she herself is a mother and we can only hope she will raise her daughter with all the love, safety, genuine concern, and appreciation a true mother is famed for giving and not desperately taking.

I enjoyed this just as much as The Priory of the Orange Tree! It was cool to go back to this world and its magic and creatures! I think I might be more into dragons now than I was when I started this series. I can’t wait to read more by Samantha Shannon too.

Erika is my favourite housewife by far! I love her voice, she’s funny and so cool! I think she should keep doing what she’s doing!! I love her music too! I’d definitely read her next memoir if she writes one!