A review by chelsea_shelves
Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I have a lot of feelings about this book because it was so highly anticipated, so I’ll put a quick review up top.

TLDR :
Stunning lyrical prose in a well researched story that couldn’t decide if it’s dark fairytale, historical fiction or fantasy that beats readers over the head with feminist-ish commentary. Character development is lacking and the FMC is not a baddie like the OG Lady Macbeth. The witches could steal the show but are not featured nearly enough. 
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Full review: 

This was quite a letdown for me as I so love Macbeth and the poetic prose of Ava Reid. I expected a lyrical, cutting and powerful retelling. What I got was lyrical but somehow lackluster while being extremely brutal. I will start with what I did appreciate. The bleak atmosphere was relentless and gothic. I loved the historical detail and especially the etymological attention throughout the novel. Reading it on my Kindle allowed me to look up words, places and people. Some were not even in Wikipedia, and I had to do a deep dive to find out more. This shows the research Reid put into this work. This lifted my rating. 

The three witches were brilliant and by far my favorite part of the story. Eerie, unsettling and then later human, comedic, redeeming. I would read a book centered on them, for sure. 

Now on to my critique. I found this overall to be overwritten and heavy handed with its feminist message of men are bad simple minded creatures and women are trapped. Set in the 900s it’s certainly fair to paint an extremely male controlled world, but the excessive commentary had me rolling my eyes far too often. It took away from what felt like a beautiful fairytale in the beginning - strong in metaphor, imagery and symbolism. However, every time I thought I understood what type of story I was reading I was proven wrong. 65% of the way in I had accepted that I was reading a dark historical fiction with some leaning into folklore of the time. Nope, suddenly I was to believe dragons and unicorns were absolutely real. Until that point the “magic” was more myth and superstition - fear, not reality. 

So then it was a fantasy - except it wasn’t. It returned to brutal gothic drear. Then the ending surged back into high fantasy….. While I like good genre blurring, this did not work and did not feel believable. Just frustrating. 

With the exception of Roscille I found most characters to be quite flat. Even her love interest as the redeeming male character was uncomplicated (save for his transformation which I will call more of an attention grab for marketing than character development…trying to be vague to not spoil the plot). Maybe this is back to the simple fairytale formatting, an attempt to make the characters archetypal - which I could be on board with if it was more consistent. The characters I did find compelling were brushed over. What a tale we could have received if we learned more about the backstory of the witches, the handmaids, Macbeth himself. But this was a world mostly devoid of females except for our heroine… a confused 17-year-old far from the fierce middle aged Lady Macbeth Shakespeare envisioned. 

Taking away my comparison to the source material, I would still be underwhelmed and ultimately annoyed with how the ending didn’t match with the rest of the book. It was not convincing. So much potential here. I wanted to love it. I tried hard to love it. I could not. 

Thank goodness for the absolutely gorgeous prose. Many lines I reread out loud just for their beauty or striking pain. For that reason, and for the clearly academic mind of the author, I may read more from Ava Reid. I’ve heard good things about Juniper and Thorn and ASID.
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