2 stars. Having read two of the author's previous novels, I was so excited going into this sapphic retelling of Psyche and Eros, and I wanted to love it so much more than I did. The over-emphasis on Psyche's first-person perspective, abundance of purple prose, and paragraph-long sentences made the reading experience more tedious than immersive. While the messages DeRobertis ties in, through the familiar grooves of the myth itself, are valuable and timely, they were extremely heavy-handed.

DeRobertis is a writer who does not need purple prose in order to convey depth and meaning, and this is proven in their past work. I found myself drifting every time I read Psyche's POV, longing for more context, more plot, and more depth, rather than surface-level metaphors. The trials, which didn't begin until 2/3 through the novel, were skimped on in order to squeeze in dialogue between Eros and Aphrodite that told rather than showed. At the end, everything is wrapped up offscreen, and Psyche and Eros are permitted to wed and Psyche becomes a goddess. Their relationship dynamics, while interesting, fell flat because their initial connection felt hollow. Most of the relationships in the book, particularly the family dynamics, felt this way - by the time I was invested, the perspective had switched, or that plot line had disappeared.

DeRobertis could have benefitted from better editing. On a granular level, Psyche's first person POV occasionally shifted into second person, and occasional errors shifted it further from first to third person.

What I liked - Eros's exploration of gender dynamics in the context of misogynistic mythology that too often erases queerness in modern retellings. The explorations of hierarchy and the future of existence in community - while important, that should have been an essay. I would much rather have read an essay by DeRobertis on the power of gender and sexual exploration against the backdrop of this myth.