This was an enjoyable collection of myth retellings with a few original stories thrown at the end, including a mythologized version of Babalola's parents' lives. Babalola's prose in the varying stories ranges from lyrical and fairy-tale-esque to sharp and witty depending on setting.

As a lifelong fairy tale retelling stan, this was of course catnip to me. I especially enjoyed Nefertiti's story and the reinvention of Pyramus and Thisbe as neighboring college students, but surprisingly liked the original stories at the end best. While the more fairy-tale-esque stories prose was more beautiful, I found the modern retellings like Yaa, Nefertiti and Psyche, had somewhat more sharp and incisive character voices and felt more like complete stories to me. This was especially true of the original stories.

This isn't to say I disliked the more historically set stories! I just sometimes felt they needed more room to breathe, because there was so much going on and so much backstory and, often, multiple perspectives, that I wished there was more time to linger.