I picked this book up at a Little Free Library, without thinking much of it. The cover looked compelling enough and the blurb seemed intriguing - a sort of cult formed around a charismatic and highly respected Greek tragedy professor who is accused of murder by our main character, a group therapist by the name of Mariana. It seemed like it'd be a good read.
It was disappointing. I won't get into the plot of the story, just what I thought of it. The book contains a lot of red herrings that add absolutely nothing to the story - characters, side-plots, theories, etc. While I appreciate red herrings in a mystery novel, these were just wastes of time for me, the reader, and the author to even plan out. There were some characters that the book could've done without and remained largely the same. My biggest issues with this book might've been the characters, to be honest. Our protagonist, Mariana? She's a fool, who follows only her one hunch throughout the whole book only to be proven wrong in the end, and completely backstabbed by her adopted daughter. Apparently, she was being groomed by her late husband Sebastian (who Mariana mentions every few sentences, oh I miss him so), and the GROUP THERAPIST could not get a clue about what was happening under her nose for years. Incompetent much? I'd say almost all of the men in this book are also very creepy - even the "love interest", Fred, who we're supposed to like at the end. He kept asking her to marry him and would not stop bothering her. Fosca is obviously very creepy as well, perhaps the creepiest one, even though he turns out not to be the killer.
I was promised a lot of things with this book. I was promised a modern Greek tragedy. I was expecting some more... y'know, things to do with Greek mythology even in the slightest? The references to mythology and tragedies seem to be thrown in as afterthoughts, the plot itself being about a mentally ill teenage girl and her delusions caused by years of grooming and abuse. This is pretty much a rant review at this point, but that's what I think about this book, so I'll keep going on with my convoluted review.
Did NOBODY - NOBODY ever except for dull Mariana - EVER think that it was odd how Fosca always made a new "group" of students every class, composed entirely of the most attractive girls in the grade? Did everybody think that was just... normal? It doesn't seem that way to me, or to any of the other readers. Honestly, everybody in this book seems to be in the low IQ range, because NOBODY can get a clue - about ANYTHING. The only way this book progresses is thanks to the sheer stupidity on behalf of EVERY character.
I digress. It was a somewhat enjoyable read, I'll admit, but the plot was problematic and bloated.