De Robertis uses the myth of Pysche and Eros to explore the complex relationship between gender and duty in the familiar Greek tales. Eros, daughter of Aphrodite, is able to change her sex and gender at will, and feels a connection to gender from many different angles that are no less a part of her for it. Psyche is bound by the societal norms for women at the time, constricted to being a work of art for her father to show off and to use as trade leverage.

There is real passion in De Robertis's characterization in this book, and I'm sure that fans of romance heavy retellings will thoroughly enjoy this offering.

I liked the idea of this more than i liked the book itself. The writing was good and i liked the dynamic between the two main characters but there was just a little something off for me. I feel like there is just a little something that didn't work for me entirely. I would try another book by this author because there were quite a lot of elements i did like about this.

The Palace of Eros is an incredible Greek mythology retelling of Psyche and Eros.

“…because you see, Psyche, my love, my sun, there has not been a place for me anywhere on earth nor in the heavens, not as all of me. I’ve had to fight to exist.”

Caro De Robertis has such a lush writing style and I was fully swept away into this stunning story. The exploration of gender fluidity and expression was written so beautifully! This was such a joy to read, even through the heart wrenching and tear filled sections, I absolutely adored this!

Queer joy being celebrated in all its facets will always be a winner to me.

I would highly, highly recommend this stunning book!

A retelling of the Eros and Psyche myth with a queer twist. As a lover of Greek myth, I was intrigued by this concept and I have to say that the exploration of gender fluidity was thorough and well thought out. Unfortunately, I believe this would have been better suited as an essay or thesis rather than a novel. A thought-provoking read but not in this format.

A beautifully written reimagining of an ancient story, with the LGBTQIIA+ twist it deserved. It is more of a character driven story, which i have to be in the mood for, but here it worked really well. I'm a big mythology fan and this intrigued me right away. It's a perfect example of why retellings are so popular these days.

I knew I was going to enjoy this book but I didn’t realise how much I would! I loved the concept of Eros as a gender non-conforming deity who realises this over the course of the book, and how perfectly normalised this was. Eros is first shown in her feminine form and I love how Psyche, who was not expecting to get a wife, quickly embraces this, and Eros’s later appearance changes. Their relationship was beautiful and I loved how the story played out and had a perfect ending. This is a fantastic read for any fans of Greek mythology, especially those looking for LGBT representation in stories. This is a great book!

3.5 stars

This is pretty much a straightforward retelling of the myth of Psyche and Eros - but this is where I felt pretty bored. Apart from being sapphic, and Eros being genderfluid, this didn't feel like it did anything different. I didn't feel surprised or taken with the story in any particular way, because it was all what I already knew of the myth, especially considering that it's such a short book that it didn't have time to delve into anything more deeply (apart from some fairly repetitive spicy scenes).

Speaking of Eros being genderfluid, I think it would have been better if we had seen her POV in first person perspective, rather than third; compared to Psyche's POV, we felt pretty distanced from Eros. Her being genderfluid was sometimes worded quite clunkily too, for seemingly no reason when the rest of the writing style was so beautiful and flowery (using words like "woman-husband", "deep woman-voice").

As I said though, this was written beautifully otherwise, and if you're looking for a sapphic Greek myth story, I would recommend it! It just wasn't quite what I wanted.

A retelling of Eros and Psyche that is enjoyable and easy to read.

Thank you HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction for the early access! #PalaceOfEros #NetGalley

A stunning and poetic novel that transcends beauty and gender. I was hooked from the very beginning, De Robertis has a true gift for narrative weaving, to the point that I forgot that I was reading a retelling, and instead had stepped back into the days of epic writing and myths.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book, and to Cato De Robertis for the amazing story!

I loved how effortlessly De Robertis wove other Greek myths into the narrative, creating a fresh yet familiar world. Eros reclaiming the story from the traditional bards was a brilliant touch, grounding the retelling in a new, empowered perspective.

Themes of gender fluidity, freedom, and what defines "monstrous" were explored beautifully. The portrayal of marriage as an institution and the crushing pressure to conform to gender norms added depth, with moments like "To stop dreaming of flight" being utterly heartbreaking.

While the plot stays largely faithful to the original myth, the inclusion of wlw and nonbinary elements made it fresh and subversive. The gods remain as petty and vengeful as ever, and Psyche's manipulative sisters were infuriating in their cruelty, true to the original lore.

In short, this novel is a breathtakingly beautiful exploration of love, desire, and identity—a perfect feminist, queer retelling of an ancient myth.

http://thesecretbookreview.co.uk

I had asked for The Palace of Eros because it is marketed as a queer retelling of the Eros and Psyche myth, which was a great selling hook to me. (I think I'm still deeply influenced by Canova's Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss, which was part of my art lessons in the late 2000s.)

Unfortunately, the book isn't it. The myth of Eros and Psyche is considered as one of the greatest love stories/as one of the most beautiful love stories, and the author didn't manage it to keep the vibe. Instead, it is very a sex-heavy retelling with flowery prose. The prose is so flowery that it creates an entire garden and I wish someone told the author to use punctuation marks from time to time because they gifted us with phrases like this:

"Over meals, on walks, as I sat at the loom weaving a tapestry out of finer thread than I'd ever used before - a simple design, two alternating colors, for fear of what would happen if I let my imagination merge with the motion of the threads, given the tumult inside my mind - I saw visions of what else I might ask for, what else might be 'your pleasure', things I should not think of and should not want: her hand in my hair as it had been the first night, her body near mine, her body on mine, her hands on me, her hands moving along me, would they be hard or supple, fast or slow or - her mouth on my neck - then what?"

The paragraph is 13 lines long on my Kindle and technically isn't even a sentence as it ends with a question mark, which makes it a question.

Another example of "The author never learned to use punctuation marks and the editor failed at their job as well" is this:

"She came here on some winged creature through the night sky, she is a woman free to roam the sky, a woman with a palace, a woman whose days are hidden from you, a woman who can do outrageous things to another woman’s body, a woman whose power is mountainous, whose strength is vast, whose charm is boundless, you’d never imagined such a woman could be, yet here she is, and far be it from you to anger her when she’s already given you so much, how could you ask for more, when she has chosen you for this adventure for some inscrutable reason you’ll never understand, just as it’s impossible to understand how this adventure can exist or what the scope of it will be, but there it is, the need to clasp it close and not let go because you want this life she’s offered you, want it with every fiber of your being, yet also want to hold on to your own knowing, however tiny it may be compared to hers."

It's a lot of words to say nothing and reminds me of my essays at university where I would have added non-necessary bullshit to reach the word limit.

As for plot, there's not a lot of it. Of course, the original myth isn't rich with plot either but de Robertis' retelling is mostly sex. Either Psyche and Eros fucking at night or Psyche masturbating during the day (when she doesn't weave, paint or eat). It's pretty half just sex for half of the book and it's ... a lot. Psyche is borderline obsessed with sex and Eros uses it as a tool to avoid questions, which makes it yucky. At the point when something could happen (the trials), the author just told the reader what happened instead of showing it. In the end, the trials are skimped on, so the author can squeeze some dialogue between Eros and Aphrodite into the book, which results in an "everything is wrapped up offscreen" situation.

In addition, to the very flowery prose: Psyche's chapters are written in the first person while Eros' are written in the third person, which is a weird decision and always irritated me while reading. It's a sharp contrast and Psyche feels like an unreliable narrator due to it at some points.

An interesting aspect of the novel is Eros' exploration of gender dynamics but I think it would have been better to discuss this as an academic essay instead of squeezing it into the novel.

I really enjoyed this book. It felt a little different to a lot of the other myth retellings I've read recently. I found the relationship between Eros and Psyche a little bit slow to behin with but the story gained momentum and it was really quite emotive towards the end. The author did a fantastic job of reaching out the her audience through her words. I think I'll be thinking of this story for a while. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

So the reason I wanted to read this book is because I ADORE Greek mythology retellings and I also love LGBTQIA+ fiction so mash them both together and I assumed this would be an incredible book. Friends, I was not wrong. This book was stunning. The romance in this book was beautiful, and fluffy, and flowery, and just so poetic. There is some spice in this book, however, it does not feel like a smut book because even the spice is poetic and flowery. There was so many times I was just smiling ear to ear reading Psyche & Eros's story. I will say, if you are to read this book, please do read up on the trigger warnings for this book, because as beautiful as this book is, it does hit some heavy hitting topics especially due to it hitting the point of how differently women were treated in that time. I would 100% recommend this to anyone who loves romance and/or Greek mythology retellings and I will definitely be buying a physical copy of this when I get paid!

(If you'd like to see more of my reviews please go to my blog:
https://doesden.blogspot.com/)

The Palace of Eros by Caro De Robertis

A non-binary retelling of the myth of Eros and Psyche. A story exploring gender fluidity and sexual identification, making it current and relevant. The duel POV novel explores the Beauty and The Beast origin story of Psyche, a mortal girl so beautiful to incur the wrath of Aphrodite and Eros, the God of Love and Desire who instead of marrying her off to a monster as per their mothers wishes, falls in love with her themself.

This was OK for me. The writing felt a little disjointed, almost like the style didn’t suit the subject matter and while the idea of this concept felt original and exciting, the characters were not complex or developed enough to fill such big shoes. Still, with such an original idea it is worth reading if you enjoy Greek myth re-tellings.

Not my favourite re-imagining of Eros and Psyche.

Thank you to the author @netgalley and @harpercollinsuk for an advanced copy in return for an honest review.

3 .5 (rounded up) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you so much to HarperCollins UK and NetGalley for an e-arc of this book.

I really loved the different take on the myth with this retelling. There are a glut of retellings at the moment and some are better than others, this was one of the better ones for me.

I enjoyed this queer take on Eros and Pysche, particuarly in terms of the exploration of gender and sexuality. It was interesting and took a different angle on the myth & had great characterisation.

The Palace of Eros is a poetic re-telling of the myth of Eros and Psyche. We follow both the characters as they battle through forbidden love, betrayal from those they love and a passionate, burning love so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes.

The writing style of De Robertis was whimsical throughout the book. I did truly feel like I was reading a mythology retelling and I very much enjoyed the pace with which the book took. I very much enjoyed how De Robertis made the first quarter of the book feel bleak and lacking whereas the rest of the book was full of vividness and freedom.

De Robertis crafted an exquisite novel about two characters already established within the literature world. I will be honest and say that this is the first Psyche and Eros novel I have read but it was beautiful and I found that the passion between the two characters wrecked havoc on my emotions. I loved them from the get-go with one another. They have such a beautiful story.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I would easily recommend it to those who enjoy reading mythology!

Huge thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

Unfortunately, this didn't work for me. First of all, it was marketed as a sensual retelling, but I didn't expect the amount of sex scenes. For almost half of the book, it's nothing but sex scene upon sex scene upon sex scene. With Eros, with Eros again but with different genitals, with a tree, with a pestle and mortar... I wish I was making this up. Psyche is borderline obsessed with sex and Eros uses that to shut her up whenever she doesn't want to answer her questions.

Which brings me to another thing that I didn't like: Eros. In this, she constantly refuses to open up to Psyche, and regularly gaslights her so that Psyche feels guilty about her completely normal emotions. She never puts herself in Psyche's shoes or try to understand why she feels what she feels.

The story also felt really unbalanced because it takes 70% of the book for Psyche to do what anyone familiar with the myth knows she will, but then the aftermath, trials and resolution all get rushed in the last 30%.

The writing is beautiful at times, but too often it is over-flowery, one sentence running on and on for an entire paragraph without really saying anything.

The highlight for me was Psyche herself and I enjoyed her growth and her pursuit of freedom. I also liked the portrayal of Aphrodite as a loving mother; I feel like she mostly gets cast as a one-dimensional, vain, petty goddess so it was interesting to focus on another aspect of her.

Sadly, that's not a lot of positive and I can't say I really enjoyed reading this. I probably would have dnfed had I not been given a review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC!

From the start, this book does not flinch away from depicting the brutal misogyny of the time period. Psyche's throngs of suitors are cast into a new light, as this book shows the horrors of being desired by men, as well as the way marriage was viewed during this time.

Plot-wise this book follows pretty closely with the plot of the original myth, although a lot more time is spent exploring Psych's stay in the titular Palace of Eros. This was definitely the right choice to make as it gives the romance time to blossom, as well as allows time to develop Psyche's character. Psyche comes into her own during this time, as Psyche and Eros explore meaning of womanhood and queerness (among other things😏).

I think the author does a good job of exploring the power imbalance between Psyche and Eros, although it's hard to not be aware that whatever agency Psyche has is only because a goddess allows her that. While their relationship isn't perfect, they do work on it and (mostly) resolve all of their problems by the end of the book.

Eros doesn't get as much character development as Psyche. This is fine, because I think this is much more Psyche's story than Eros'. But there are still certain elements I wish had been explored, mainly Eros' use of her powers. Throughout this book, Eros is kind of flippant about the way to uses her arrows to make people fall in love. Although she expresses regret about how she inadvertently ruined Daphne's life, she doesn't show much remorse or contemplation about any other people's lives she affected. The web of power is something Eros contemplates quite a lot, but she seems to cast herself in the role of being powerless to the whims of Zeus, while failing to recognise or address her own power.

I know I said earlier that the story focusing on Psyche living in the palace was a good choice, but it also results in less time spent on depicting Psyche's trials. I stand by this opinion, but this sort of results in the trials being kind of... boring. The original myth focuses much more on the events of the trials as Psyche proving her love for Eros, but in this book Psyche chooses to undergo the trials as a way to forge peace with Aphrodite. This was an interesting choice to make narratively, but ultimately lowers the stakes, especially since Aphrodite isn't even actively bothered with Psyche anymore.

Speaking of Aphrodite, I feel like her depiction was kind of shallow. She's not portrayed as a very complex character, aside from being a jealous goddess. I appreciate that the author shows how much she loves and cares for Eros, but I feel like she could have been explored a lot more.

I have always appreciated how special the myth of Psyche and Eros is, in the way that Psyche is one of few female Greek heroes, and also one of few Greek heroes who gets a happy ending. I think this novel captures the essence of the original myth, as well as expands on it in new and interesting ways.

Ultimately, while there are certain aspects of this book that I wish there could have been more of, the themes that the author chooses to explore, they do an excellent job of.

An unabashedly queer reimagining of the Psyche and Eros myth, Caro De Robertis has written a sensuous, riveting tale that explores being non-binary, what it is to be a woman in a patriarchal world that cannot value anything outside its prescribed ideas even when they do harm, and the little ways we can take back power for ourselves and cut through the web that traps and binds us all. There are several reimagingsof this particular story out at the moment but this is (weirdly) the most faithful even as it subverts classic gender norms. Very much for grown ups - don’t give this to a younger teen or tween - De Robertis writes a tender, nuanced, sensual relationship that must overcome the secrets and obstacles that Eros puts in their way and considers how protection easily becomes restriction and confinement. I really enjoyed this and will definitely be recommending it.