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A review by beckchicken
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
2.5
The whole idea of this book seems to be retelling of various mythologies using the same set of characters throughout the book, told from two perspectives. I think the idea is cool, but this book didn't quite do it for me for a few reasons.
The language is very flowery and at times very nice, but it is so overly descriptive of certain things at the expense of sometimes describing basic elements of the setting. For example, you'll know what a character's skin smells/feels/looks like before you know the basic layout of a room during scenes when it matters or before you know if two characters are even interacting in the same room.
Also some of the writing is just really cringey. There's a very erotic way of describing every character in the book, lots of licking random things/people or having a character describe that they want to lick random things/people. Lots of hair and skin sniffing and overuse of the word "stink" and almost every scene between our two main characters ends with them having sex. Characters are constantly defined or described by their sex life, or how they seem they would be in bed. "She'd be good at sex, he understood, without knowing how" (page 18).
The scenes are also not quite descriptive enough to be smut either, so the whole style is just a bit confusing and by the end I was cringing and eye-rolling. There's also this theme in the book that leads us to believe the worst thing you can be is fat. Characters are basically described at their rock bottom when they become fat, which felt dumb.
Overall, I liked what this book was trying to do. A relationship told from two sides with two different, valid, perspectives, and two characters enabling each other's toxic traits in a way that keeps them both satisfied is a story I would have loved to see told with depth and nuance. In some ways this was explored, and in some ways it was even achieved.
The language is very flowery and at times very nice, but it is so overly descriptive of certain things at the expense of sometimes describing basic elements of the setting. For example, you'll know what a character's skin smells/feels/looks like before you know the basic layout of a room during scenes when it matters or before you know if two characters are even interacting in the same room.
Also some of the writing is just really cringey. There's a very erotic way of describing every character in the book, lots of licking random things/people or having a character describe that they want to lick random things/people. Lots of hair and skin sniffing and overuse of the word "stink" and almost every scene between our two main characters ends with them having sex. Characters are constantly defined or described by their sex life, or how they seem they would be in bed. "She'd be good at sex, he understood, without knowing how" (page 18).
The scenes are also not quite descriptive enough to be smut either, so the whole style is just a bit confusing and by the end I was cringing and eye-rolling. There's also this theme in the book that leads us to believe the worst thing you can be is fat. Characters are basically described at their rock bottom when they become fat, which felt dumb.
Overall, I liked what this book was trying to do. A relationship told from two sides with two different, valid, perspectives, and two characters enabling each other's toxic traits in a way that keeps them both satisfied is a story I would have loved to see told with depth and nuance. In some ways this was explored, and in some ways it was even achieved.