I have loved Jennifer Saints other books and so looking forward to this. The audio acting was fantastic and really hooked me in to the story.

A retelling of the Greek myth of Elektra, the origins of the Trojan War, and the curse of the House of Atreus. Told from the viewpoints of three women, this novel is an excellent insight into Greek history.
The three women in the story are: Clytemnestra, Helen’s sister and Agamemnon’s wife. Helen is taken to Troy by Paris and Agamemnon raises an army to win the battle. Next is Cassandra, princess of Troy who was cursed by Apollo to see the future but she was never believed. Despite her knowledge about the fall of Troy, she can’t do anything. Lastly is Elektra, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon’s daughter, who conspired with her brother to kill her mother and his lover in revenge for her father’s murder. I had only a vague basic idea about Clytemnestra and Elektra but I always felt bad for Cassandra whom no one believed because she did not give into Apollo’s sexual advances. All the three women are superbly shown in all their complexities, pettiness, ambitions, glories, and disasters.
Cassandra’s chapters were my favorite. The reader sees her family history and her growth from a child to an adult. Every woman who has been dismissed for her beliefs or her version of any event will be able to connect to Cassandra after she’s cursed.
The Electra complex is a psychoanalytic term used to describe a girl’s sense of competition with her mother for the affections of her father. It has been debunked but the origin is from the Greek character of Elektra. Saint shows Elektra’s feelings for her father and I found that hard to connect to. There were times when I was struggling to understand her viewpoint but it still makes sense, if seen from a historical perspective.

Elektra is an excellent reimagining of the three women, Clytemnestra, Cassandra, and Elektra. Personally, I enjoyed it as I like reading alternative stories and reimagined tales. Thank you for sharing the audio!

Beautifully written about three women caught in a bubble of history, this book packs drama into every page and emotion into every chapter.

I won't forget it in a hurry.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ALC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

As a massive fan of Greek Mythology, I was really looking forward to this. I enjoyed Ariadne so was excited to get to this retelling and what a retelling it was. I'm not sure this book is appropriately named. Although named Elektra, this story is told from the perspectives of three people, a Queen and two Princesses. My biggest takeaway from this book was it was shrouded in grief from the three perspectives.

We see the grief of a mother in the form of Clytemnestra. The loss of her daughter at the hands of Clytemnestra's husband causing her to ultimately kill him. We see the grief of a woman in the form of Cassandra. She has the sight but is never believed so she essentially goes mad. All because she said no to a God. The grief of a daughter is depicted by Elektra herself. She adored her father and blinded by her grief over his death she becomes deadset on ending her mother, Clytemnestras' life. Clytemnestra's path kickstarted a series of unfortunate events which tragically results in her death.

Grief is a universal thing but how we deal with it is not. There are many different ways in how we react, process and try to navigate through lifie after the loss of a loved one so I found it really interesting to see how the women dealt with their grief in this story.

I really enjoy the way Jennifer Saint writes her Greek Mythology retellings from the perspective of women and I hope she doesn't stop anytime soon. She's definately become an autobuy author for me.

A very good and well-informed mythological retelling that gives space to women and to their side of the story. I really enjoyed it, and I think it would be very good for a younger crowd too. I listened to it in audiobook and I really enjoyed the narration too.

This greek retelling focuses on the women at the heart of the Trojan War, King Agamemnon’s wife and Helen of Troy’s sister Clytemnestra, her daughter Elektra and the psychic Princess of Troy, Cassandra. The novel follows the war on Troy very closely, and with great detail, it looks into how it affects women, both the nobility as well as the working women. It showed us the kindness and the cruelty that is possible and how generational trauma influences familial relationships.

I enjoyed the fact that in this novel by Saint we got to have a look at three characters. Obviously the experiences of Elektra and Cassandra, both Princesses of the two countries at war, had wildly different rules, freedoms and rights during, and especially after the destruction of Troy. Clytemnestra’s story is particularly interesting due to her sister being the cause of the 10 year-long war and with her daughter Iphigenia being the first casualty of the war, it shows her excitement at the prospect of the birth of her first child to the grief when she is sacrificed and the revenge she plots for the decade after to avenge her firstborn daughter.

With Cassandra you can see how she doesn’t fit into her family and so she pledges to Apollo as a priestess. But when she asks him to grant her visions of the future, he curses her so that no one ever believes her predictions, regardless of how accurate they are. It proves to be her downfall and even the gods abandon her in her moments of need. I thought that she as a character was most intriguing and who I would have been keen to learn/read more about.

Having read Saint’s first novel, Ariadne, another greek mythology retelling, I had really high hopes. All in all, I think she met and exceeded all expectations, with an excellent amount of detail in the setting and in each characters introspective thoughts. I felt like Saint gave us excellent insight into these stories from the perspective of women, who are often overlooked and gave the story more depth. As much as I appreciated the triple perspective, I think I preferred the singular point of view in Ariadne. That being said, I highly recommend this to any greek mythology fan of Natalie Haynes, Pat Barker and Madeleine Miller.

I found this to be an amazing and interesting read! And the cover is so lovely!! Looking forward to the author's next story!

The narrators were good, each giving voice to one of the different women in a way that felt natural and nuanced,

Let me start by saying that this was a decent book. Lot's of people have tried writing about the Trojan War and lots of attempts fall flat for me because I was ruined for it in my teens by MZB's The Firebrand which so far is still superior to any other attempt to voice the female perspective, this included. However, while this zooms through the conflict and is a somewhat shallow reading of the source material, it is still very readable with the bonus that it includes Clytemnestra's and Elektra's povs. Don't be deceived by the title however, Elektra has less to say or do than the other characters, probably because if you're going to follow the broadly accepted body of myth and tragedy, she doesn't have much to do. The book still managed to examine mother-daughter dynamics in an interesting way and as a bonus, Saint has not focused on how evil all the men are or how virtuous the women are. Everyone is allowed to be a fully rounded character with motives that make sense. Overall I enjoyed this quick dip into Greek myth.

I had the pleasure to re-dive into the stories of Electra, Cassandra and Clytemnestra through this audiobook recently and, I enjoyed it very much!

I am quite familiar with the Trojan war by now and although there have been quite a few feminist retellings already, I still really enjoyed how these 3 specific women were fleshed out. Their voices were distinct and I feel like I know them now personally even though I already knew their stories. I really recommend the audiobook as it really helped empower their thoughts and feelings to me. I am glad only 3 were chosen as it helped getting attached to them and it's almost like they could be sisters, linked by the curse of war.

The only reason why I rounded my rating to 3 is because the story itself did not reveal anything I did not somewhat know. It is a clever and well researched story but I did not feel any particular thrill as it still stayed relatively close to the original story. However if you're not that familiar with The Iliad and its side characters you will definitely find some "historical" novelty in there and get to know them better.

Thank you NetGalley for the Audiobook.

I'm sorry but this one just didn't meet my expectations. Listening on audio I think there really needed to be a statement of which character's POV was being spoken. Though I found the opening enjoyable it seemed to drag quite quickly, with lots of telling rather than showing and a very 'distant' perspective on events. Personally, I felt the 3-way structure just didn't work as each change was clunky and lacking irony, artfulness, etc. Overall, I'm glad others liked it but the idea of Elektra, the original of the Elektra Complex, led me to expect something more exciting and taboo-breaking.

I listened to this one on audio.

I have recently been getting into mythology but don't know too much about it.

I had never heard of Elektra until I read this book.
This is told from three women's view points - Elektra, her mum Clytemnestra and Cassandra.
I did get a bit mixed up listening to the audio as I thought it was just mainly from 2 view points and didn't realise about Cassandra and I wondered what was going on.

I liked Clytemnestra but found Elektra annoying.

Around the same time I was listening to this I was also reading A Song of Achilles, and I really enjoyed doing that as some of the story crossed over and I got to see more view points.

But overall I did enjoy A Song of Achilles more. So I will be giving this book 3.5 stars. But will read more from this author

This really does work as an audiobook!
I loved Ariadne and was looking forward to Electra but I found that, when reading my physical copy, I was struggling to read for more than a few pages at a time… queue in the audio, and here I was flying through!
Again, Jennifer Saint finds a powerful way to give voices to all these famous but silent mythological women and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

This is probably one of the more shocking Greek mythology stories. Reading this version really helped me to understand a bit more about even the most unbelievable motivations. Though I still can't believe Elektra supports her father. It's interesting how each generation thinks they can end the family curse by doing exactly what others did before them. You wonder if anyone will ever learn!

A fantastic feminist retelling of the story of Cassandra, Elecktra and Clytemnestra. It tells the story true to the Greek myth and is tragically sad. The story focuses on what happens in Troy.. As I am not familiar with Greek myths it was an enjoyable read.

As someone who has never read/listened to a Greek mythology story before this one has really given me an urge to read more. The subject has always interested me, but it also intimidated me, so I'm really glad I went in with the audio version of this story.
Elektra is told in 3 separate female POVs and is based around events from before and after the Trojan war.
I really enjoyed the story even though it started slow and definitely wasn't a happy story that I usually go for. I loved getting sucked into the story and the details of the tale. Each woman's pov is a powerful story, and the narrators really sold the plot with their storytelling. I can't wait to revisit more stories set in this timeline.

Preliminary 5-star review. Will post a full review and adjust the rating accordingly after I finish the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-ARC copy of this book, in exchange for this honest review.

A Greek retelling told from a woman's point of view. Each person's story is told by another person which I enjoyed. It was a Intresting listen, and recommend if have you like Greek mythology.

I always love a Greek mythology retelling! However this was super different to my normal reads. I really enjoyed how this focused on the women involved in the story around the legend of Troy and the Trojan war, and found it to be a very compelling and insightful take on this tale. Many other aspects of the story stayed true to the legend of Troy, but I will always be up for reading a retelling that is told from the perspective of the women who have previously been left out of a “POV” role in these stories. The narration flowed really well between the three POV characters, and it was a very easy listen.

A lovely retelling of the affects the Trojan War had on families. I particularly like read Greek stories from the woman's point of view, and this did not disappoint.
It was intriguing for each chapter to have a different person read (audiobook) a particular characters chapter, so it was easier to recognise whom that chapter was about.

A retelling from the women at the heart of the Trojan War…

This book was pretty much what I expected - a beautifully done retelling through the voices of three
strong female characters: Electra, Clytemnestra and Cassandra. The opening was a little slow to begin with (with much scene setting and character set up) but that’s possibly needed for anyone less familiar with the Grecian history here. The narrator’s melodic voice told the story well and I’d definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves Greek mythology and feminist retellings. Huge thanks to the author, Jennifer Saint, and publisher for this advance review copy. Views my own. 4*

I listened to this audiobook via NetGalley and BOY OH BOY it was good. This seems to be my Ancient Greek Mythology Era and I am here for it.
We follow Clytemnestra, her daughter Elektra and Casandra, princess of Troy around the time of the Trojan War.
My favourite POV was definitely Clytemnestra although I started to get a bit frustrated with how much she was going on about Iphanegia … we get it. You’re annoyed. But what about your other kids?! And the creepy dude who has moved in!
I definitely wanted more Elektra and Casandra but I will just get my fix from other Greek mythology retellings.

Audiobook wise, the narrators were distinct and the lady who voiced Clytemnestra was amazing. The scene in Aulis was *chefs kiss*. So much emotion in her voice I was eating it up!