stmuncy 's review for:

The Palace of Eros by Caro De Robertis

2.0

medium-paced

---

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’m officially giving up on feminist retellings of Greek mythology. I can only take so much disappointment. Psyche and Cupid is one of my favorite myths ever, and this book ruined it. I had to call my sister at the halfway point just to rant.

If you’re not familiar with the myth of Psyche and Eros, here’s a short summary:

Psyche is a mortal girl and the youngest and most beautiful of three daughters. She’s so beautiful that people begin to worship her in place of Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. This angers Aphrodite, so she sends Eros, god of love and desire, to take revenge on Psyche by using his arrow to make her fall in love with something hideous. But Eros ends up shooting himself with his arrow and falling in love with Psyche. He takes her to his palace to be his wife, but never allows Psyche to look upon him. They only meet at night when the darkness hides his appearance.

Psyche’s sisters end up visiting the palace and become jealous of Psyche’s situation. They tell her that she should secretly look at her husband to ensure that he isn’t a horrible monster and if he is, she should kill him. Psyche ends up doing this by lighting a lamp to look at Eros. She so surprised by how beautiful he is that she accidentally wounds herself with one of Eros’s arrows and falls passionately in love. She spills hot oil on Eros, who flees and leaves her back on Earth.

After that, Psyche has to undergo trials in order to return to her husband’s side. 

I just gave that summary and assigned the length to each paragraph that this book does to that part of the myth. Because this book does not care about Psyche’s trials. The main part of the original myth, Psyche’s journey, only exists in the last 30% of this book. At that point, one might as well not write it at all.

Once Psyche is with Eros, be prepared for nothing to happen for 150 pages except a cycle of Psyche painting, weaving, masturbating, and having sex with Eros. Honestly, I was so bored.

Once we do get to Psyche’s trials, the novel stops caring about her character altogether. Eros’s POV, which until this point was the less important one, becomes the dominant POV. We aren’t really with Psyche through her trials. 

All of this begs the question: who is this novel for? It’s not for people who loved the original myth. So then it must be for people who’ve never read it before, but the novel is boring on its own merit.

Lastly, the prose is flowery to the point of ridiculousness.

I think my conclusion is that there’s nothing here. If the book had been 100 pages shorter, I might’ve liked it more.