Hera by Jennifer Saint is the latest from the best selling queen of mythology retellings and is an in depth exploration of the story of a much maligned Goddess, notorious for her jealous and vengeful nature. As with all of Saint's retellings there is a feminist slant that makes Hera a more sympathetic character, however overall she remains something of a morally grey character , sometimes compassionate but often quick to anger and determined to attain her rightful place among the pantheon of Gods. She is often not a very likeable character but still a compelling one and I was engrossed by her story from the beginning. Saint expands on her story in a way that makes her actions more understandable and helps the reader to understand her motivations. In her role as Queen of the Gods and wife of Zeus her story intersects with that of many other Gods , heroes and mythological creatures so expect to see several familiar names over the course of the book. As always with this author the writing style is smooth, allowing the story to flow naturally which is important given the large cast of characters from mythology and the vast expanse of time that the book covers as in the hands of a lesser writer it might have felt too jumpy.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Hera was always my least favourite goddess of Greek Mythlogy and I looked forward to reading this to get more insight into her character and perhaps have this retelling that would make her more 3 dimensional.

Unfortunately- she’s still my least favourite. Hera has typically been portrayed as the jealous manipulative wife who is power hungry and willing to destroy people’s lives to save face from Zeus’s adultery. There’s not much that is new here for me or that can be interpreted differently. Her acceptance of Zeus surprised me and didn’t sit well. Her interactions with her children were interesting and different from what I expected. Painting her as the mother of Typhoon was also a different slant to the mythology.

All in - it was an interesting read but not for me. I can’t tell if it was because it was written in 3rd person ? I found it hard to connect with her and found her generally unlikeable. Her pain and anger I could relate to but it never felt like she ever did anything concrete about it.

This was a great Re telling of the Greek mythological story of Hera from her point of view.
I really liked this book and like other books I’ve read recently gives a fascinating look (be it fictional of course!) at the often overlooked female character in a major story or book.
I must say there should be some TW for this book, if sexual violence or childbirth effects you in any way.

This book gave a fantastic interpretation from Hera’s point of view, she was a free goddess and roamed the world as she pleased, enjoying the peace her, Zeus and their allies achieved. But it quickly changes when Zeus creates a patriarchal rule and forces a marriage and role unto Hera which she did not want. This began her spiteful story which contains triggers for rape and sexism. She made to be the goddess of marriage, all the while her husband and king of gods is a serial adulterer and has offspring popping up like nobodies business. Hera is furious when her own children by Zeus are classed as lower than his bastards on Olympus and are given lesser roles than the big names we know like Athena, Apollo and Artemis. She is jealous of the other goddesses, nymphs, titanesses and even mortals which Zeus chooses (usually by force) and spends most of her time getting revenge on either them or their children.

I enjoyed that the book features a lot of known mythology events, but seeing them from Hera’s perspective instead of the other gods. We see what she saw in the other gods and why she hated or resented them so much and it gives Hera a sympathetic view for her experience. This story isn’t about redeeming her, but we may understand her more to know why she did the things she is know for.

This book is medium to fast paced. It does jump in time a lot and covers many other god, monster and mortal characters both well and lesser known. Because of that it could feel slightly erratic in pacing but for me I just felt that these characters are gods and therefore time moved much more quickly so it didn’t make it difficult to follow the jumping around. I rated it 4 stars as I really enjoyed the book but it just took me a little longer to get through as there are a lot of details and characters to get through.

My review has been posted to Goodreads but I can’t get the direct link to this as the app or website doesn’t allow me to access share settings (I assume a bug as I’ve previously not had an issue!).

As a fan of Greek retellings, I rather enjoyed this book. I preferred Hera to Saint's Ariadne. Our protagonist is complex and yet in some form, feels universal. I enjoyed the drama between the gods and how they were portrayed throughout the story - it was a nice change from Ariadne.
However, I think after reading Hera, this might be my last Greek retelling for a while. The stories don't capture my attention as much anymore, and especially as the market is saturated with 'feminist retellings', some of the writing can feel preachy, or a bit too on the nose. It's lacking subtlety.

Hera - Jennifer Saint

Hera, sister and wife of Zeus. Goddess of women and marriage.

Greek mythology is not my usual cup of tea and after reading Elektra by JS for a book club I was curious to see to try again and see how this book was.

While this book is a retelling with in-depth dive into the life of Hera, Jennifer Saint's writing is emotive, passionate and accessible for readers who might not delve into this topic too often.

Hera is a strong, passionate often jealous woman who does not have the most forgiving story in mythology, in this book you are shown a different side where you can empathise with her in moments of grief, however you can never erase Heras jealousy and the punishment she ordered for the women who lay with Zeus (with or without a choice) .

Hera may not be your favourite Goddess but her story is worth the read.

Thank you Random thing Tours for this Arc

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher Wildfire/Headline for the digital ARC, it has not affected my honest review.

TW: sexual assault, rape, violence, misogyny, child death, abuse, pregnancy, childbirth

Every book I’ve read by Jennifer Saint so far, “Ariadne”, “Electra” and “Atalanta”, have all been brilliant but I think “Hera” might just be her best one yet. It begins with the war led by Zeus and his siblings against their father Cronos and the early years of their roles as the Olympian gods. Hera dreams of her family ruling peacefully and fairly among themselves. However, this is not the way of things- soon enough Zeus and her other brothers Posiedon and Hades split the world into three realms they’ll rule as their own. In this world that was supposed to be different, Hera sees that it isn’t- and that Zeus in particular is just as bad as their father. Forced to become Zeus’ wife through rape, Hera rules as Queen of the Gods and is granted her own domain: to be the goddess of marriage, but that matters little to her husband as he constantly chases women and nymphs against their will. Unable to act against her husband, and burning with the same fury she once used on the battlefield, Hera doesn’t care that the world will make her into a villain. She targets her husband’s children and the women themselves, reminding everyone who she is through brutality and vengeance while hoping, despite herself, that her own children might stand by her side. In the midst of everything is incredible moments- like the battles between Titans, Giants and Olympians, the births of Zeus’ many children (my favourites were Athena and the twins, Apollo and Artemis) and her revenge on them, the war on Troy and humanity turning away from the gods- shown through the eyes of Hera, who alternates between deeply kind and deeply angry. This book makes no attempt to redeem Hera, she wouldn’t consider herself in need of any kind of redemption, but it does show her at her best and worst in a beautiful, flowing story.

I adored this book from the first page as Hera walks across the blood splattered battlefields of the war against her father. We see her as one of the original Olympians, watching curiously as humanity is created from clay by Zeus and then destroyed. She wanders through forests and befriends monsters, all while trying to make sense of this world that is everything she thought would disappear with Olympian rule. I loved how she felt about her children, how she put so much of her anger and expectation for their loyalty into them, and how their apparent inadequacies consistently let her down. In mythology Hera has always been shown as cruel, lashing out for no apparent reason but here it is obvious- she is the goddess of women but treated just as they are by the man who says he loves her. Some parts of this book are deeply uncomfortable to read but it’s supposed to be. The way that Jennifer Saint writes Hera’s anger and disappointment is so poignant, especially when she becomes wrathful against her husband and the other gods. One of my favourite parts of this book comes towards the end when Hera walks among humanity for the first time, seeing all that they’ve achieved even without the gods. We see the absolute worst of the Greek gods in this book, from assault to murder to torture and rape, but there’s also an incredible depth to the emotions that Hera experiences throughout her immortal life. To write from the perspective of one of the gods would be hard enough and I think Hera, as complicated and complex as she is, has been shown incredibly in this novel.

Thank you for this ARC.

If you like greek gods or women or you are a woman or a greek god...this one's for you 😁 Jennifer Saint once again producing a beautifully written tale that I couldn't put down.

I have linked my review on Booktok.

Hera by Jennifer Saint is a glorious retelling of the myth of Hera, immortal goddess and daughter of the ancient Titan Cronos. Often recounted as a spiteful, vengeful wife, this retelling is completely different and I was all in!

Jennifer Saint has a unique way of re-imagining the characters of Mount Olympus, reframing Hera to a woman of strangth and tenacity, fighting for what is right against the odds

Absolutely outstanding

Thank you to Netgalley, Headline | Wildfire and the author Jennifer Saint for this fantastic ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

One of my most anticipated reads of the year, and unfortunately one of my most disappointing.

I had high expectations, having read and loved the author's previous works. For me, this book fell flat. It didn't do anything different with the character of Hera.

I also found the pacing of the book very rushed as the book tries to take us from the Titanomachy to the fall of the Olympians in a short book for this feat.

I like Hera for the very reason that she is a hard character to love. She's very emotional and vengeful and this is captured here. But this book just didn't add to any of my prior knowledge of the mythological figure.

Thanks: Received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I am starting to get a little bit of Greek-myth-retelling-fatigue at present but this is my fault as I love the 'original' stories so much I am always going to be drawn to these!

While Saint does a good job of explaining why Hera is such a vengeful deity I never developed any sympathy with her and while it was refreshing to read a female character who really didn't care about what people thought of her it made for a tougher read.
My favourite bit about the book was how Saint/Hera depicted the end of the Olympian Gods, I'd never really thought about how their influence ended and what that would have been like.

I am a big fan of Greek Myth retellings and Jennifer Saint is one of my favourite authors in this genre. I was thrilled to see her new novel focuses on Hera, Queen of the Gods.

Hera is probably not everyone's cup of tea. She has a reputation of being a vengeful and jealous Goddess, directing her rage at the victims of her philandering husband/brother, Zeus, instead of the God himself. In this book Jennifer Saint tells the famous myths from Hera's perspective and shows us that while Hera is a Goddess she is also a woman who is complicated, feels emotions and has flaws.

I feel much more connected to Hera after reading this book and I think this may just be one of my favourite myth retellings to date.

📚 Thank you to Headline for providing me with an ARC to read and review 📚

“They call out to Hera the bride, Hera the wife, Hera the mother, with every gift and sadness the hold. Each of them is a stream flowing into an ocean of disparity, deeper and vaster than she could imagine, and she follows them one after the other, each women’s suffering so familiar she can barely tell one anguish from the next. “

I never thought that I would I feel very much positive emotion at all towards Hera based on EVERY other retelling of various Greek myths and stories. It was refreshing to think about hera in a totally new light - of, at times, infuriating by her lack of action where she could have really made a difference vs where she chose to use her power.

I really enjoyed thinking about the truth of her perceptions vs what I’ve always assumed/ the image I have of Hera. The writing style didn’t quite capture me like Ariadne. I would have preferred a first person narrative to tell Hera’s story - for me it felt a bit jumpy at times and I struggled to feel really at one with the narrative until the last third of the book. However, chunks of the writing really enamoured me. I particularly loved the descriptions of the lands/the earth, in addition to the depiction of Gaia. I could really feel the presence of Gaia through the writing.

Also Hera’s relation to Typhon and therefore the chimera, hydra etc was something that I was totally unaware of? Always nice to learn something new. Plus I enjoyed the little easter eggs from Jennifer Saint’s other books.

When Hera helps her siblings to overthrow the Titan Cronos, she imagines them ruling the Heavens and Earth together. But it soon becomes clear the Zeus has his own ideas, and she finds herself relegated to a mere wife. Queen of the Gods, but forced to rule over the domain of marriage, which her own husband makes a mockery of, Hera is determined to take back the power that is rightfully hers to wield.

I love Greek mythology, and it was fun to read a story that focusses so completely on the gods themselves, rather than demi-gods and heroes. I really enjoyed seeing the personalities and powers of each different god as they came into being, from the ancient titans, to the children of Cronos, all the way to Zeus’ many children with gods, titans and mortals.

My favourite representations had to be Athena and Hestia, both very different but compelling characters. Hera, on the other hand, was thoroughly dislikeable. In the beginning, I understood her frustrations and how she found herself in such a weak position compared to her sister goddesses, but as the story progressed I found her more and more spiteful and self-centred. As goddess of marriage, she did nothing whatsoever to aid the mortals praying to her and, unlike the other goddesses who took their duties seriously and made a significant impact on the lives of the gods and mortals alike, Hera’s own existence felt pretty pointless. All she did was seethe over Zeus’ betrayals and punish his victims. This was a disappointing representation of the queen of the gods from a so-called feminist re-telling.

I enjoyed the writing style and overall feel of this book, but I’ve read much better Greek re-tellings recently, and am now unsure if I will bother reading Jennifer Saint’s other novels. Who knows, they might be better with a focus on a different character. I did enjoy the way she represented the decline of the gods and the transition to more modern times.

I love love love Jennifer Saints books and honestly, I think this is her best yet!!
Hera feels like such a pinnacle addition to Saint’s list, encompassing the greatness of a Goddess so huge that it wove into her other retellings.

As usual, Saint’s intention is to make a woman of Greek myth who is usually just known as someones husband a powerful thing in her own right, and she does this wonderfully with Hera’s story. It shows how she was equal and just as powerful as Zeus, but does not forget to show how she suffers misogyny.

While it’s never been my personal favourite pasts of her novels, Jennifer Saint’s ability for writing her Goddesses relationships is exceptional and Hera is no different. She also portrayed the greatness of Gods and their relationship with humans perfectly, without ignoring the glaringly obvious power issues and misogyny.

I know a lot about Hera already, and she is so often characterised as the vengeful wife and I love that Saint did not intent to redeem her, but instead humanise her and show her reasoning.

Thank you so much to Wildfire/Headline and Netgalley for the ARC!!

This is her best one yet (and that's saying something because I'm a huge fan of her other books)!

Hera is a very rich book and I felt like it made Jennifer Saint’s books come full circle for me because, in illustrating the vastness of Hera’s life - and that of any god - it touched on some of the narratives explored in the author’s other rewritings.

Hera is known in current times usually as Zeus’s wife, the goddess of marriage, but this book intends to show just how much more Hera has to show for herself. The book starts right after Hera and Zeus take down Cronus and the Titans, starting the age of the Olympians. It shows how Hera was in equal measure responsible for this take-down of the old regime and is just as powerful as Zeus, but suffers at the hand of misogyny.

Reading this book was really infuriating because of all of the situations Hera goes through, especially when it comes to her relationship (in the wide sense) with Zeus, and it intended for us readers to feel that way. Jennifer Saint’s writing is at its best here; she was really able to portray the vastness of the life of a god, compared to the fleetness of a human's - the changes and the frustrating many cases of sexism/misogyny.

The book doesn’t seek to redeem Hera against characterisations of her as the jealous and vengeful wife, but humanizes her and gives an overview of her life and all of the many things that happened in the life of a goddess that is one of the most ancient and powerful among the Olympians.

Thank you very much to Wildfire/Headline for my stunning proof! I also listened to this one as an audiobook, narrated by Naomi Frederick, and it was incredible. Thank you so much to Headline audio!

With thanks to Netgalley and the author Jennifer Saint.

Having read Jennifer's other Greek Mythology books, I thought I would enjoy Hera, but I felt myself plodding through Hera and I didn't care at all about Hera. Three stars for this book.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for this digital ARC. I love mythology retellings and have been wanting to get into Jennifer Saint's work, so this was a great opportunity.

First of all, I thought this book was beautifully written and I really enjoyed the writing style. It's clearly well researched and I felt I learned a lot about greek mythology that I could connect with other retellings I've read, but there are a couple of things that prevented me from rating this 5 stars.

I would have loved to spend more time getting to know Hera at the start of the book, before Zeus's 'betrayal', as I didn't feel like I really knew who she was to connect with her and this was a common issue throughout the book. The book hurtles through so many events, spanning a huge amount of time so each event feels rushed through rather than really getting to the heart of it and how it affects Hera.

If Hera's anger and rage at Zeus's unacceptable actions were delved more deeply into, I think some of her resulting actions would have made more sense, but instead it felt more like a meandering of events. We should have felt Hera's anger and rage building throughout the book but unfortunately this didn't happen and I wasn't really rooting for her as a character. I felt the same about the rest of the characters, they felt one-dimensional due to the focus on the events rather than the characters experiencing them.

I absolutely loved the ending, but I feel if the above issues were resolved I would have been more emotionally affected. I think this could have massively benefitted from being a duology so that we could have spent more time getting to know Hera and dissecting the events further.

Thank you to the publisher and the author for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC

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A stunning blend of feminism and Greek mythology retelling.

I absolutely devoured this book and loved learning more about Hera and the other Greek gods and goddesses portrayed in their true light.

With that said, I do feel like the book jumped between events often and so I found myself consistently backtracking to try and understand what I missed which just led to me becoming confused.


This review has been posted on my Goodreads and on Waterstones.

I will be posting on TikTok within the next week

J Saint does a great job of showing us the beauty and the ugliness of the Greek gods in this retelling of Hera.

We see the powerful goddess and warrior Hera is, before Zeus; and then the petty, vengeful, power-hungry wife she is reduced to. This retelling does not try to redeem Hera but allows the reader to understand her.

I loved that J Saint included the interactions some of the gods had with mortals and also some Greek characters that aren't too often featured in mainstream media.

I felt that the pacing was a bit off at times. It seemed that in including numerous tales of Hera's vengeance or attempts at retribution, some accounts lacked enough depth to have much impact.
I felt that it ended up being more of a collection of historical accounts of Hera plotting and losing to Zeus.

The story overall, is thought-provoking and compelling.