Loved every minute of this. Epic retelling, highlighting the misrepresented and misunderstood stody of Lady Macbeth.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for this eCopy to review

Lady Macbeth offers a fresh and intriguing take on the classic Shakespearean character, delving deep into her psyche and motivations. Reid’s writing is vivid and atmospheric, bringing the dark and brooding world of medieval Scotland to life.

However, I found the pacing to be somewhat uneven. There were moments when the story dragged, and I struggled to stay engaged. Some of the character development felt a bit flat, leaving me wanting more depth and complexity, especially with such a fascinating protagonist.

Lady Macbeth was a master manipulator, but it was all just a bit too confusing

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher Random House/Del Rey for the digital ARC, it has not affected my honest review.

TW: rape and sexual assault, murder, violence, blood, misogyny, war

This is an incredibly original retelling of Lady Macbeth’s story, imagining her as a 17 year old girl forced to leave her pampered life in Brittany and to marry a Scottish lord in the middle of nowhere. I’m an enormous fan of Ava Reid’s work (particularly ‘Juniper and Thorn’ and ‘A Study in Drowning’). This wasn’t what I expected, but I really enjoyed it as a different interpretation of what might have driven Lady Macbeth. I thought I would have gotten to see more of the "villain" side to her, so it fell a little flat but the writing is as gorgeous as ever. I was expecting more though so I'm let down.

After absolutely loving A Study in Drowning and being a massive fan of retellings and reimaginings, as well as seeing all the buzz around this one in the bookstagram community, I was excited to read this one. Unfortunately, like many other readers, this book wasn’t what I hoped and ultimately it was a DNF that left me unsure what to write.

To her credit, Reid did provide a lush and gothic feeling prose that was beautiful in parts but I had so much difficulty connecting with this book. Firstly, from the offset, I found it quite confusing how characters and places had multiple different names that were from supposed variations of languages used at the time. I understand the intent but it didn’t have the desired effect and I don’t believe that it was historically accurate anyway. It was quite a mish mash that was marketed as a retelling when it basically wasn’t There were a lot of choices by the author that I just didn’t understand, including the young age of Roscille. I just couldn’t bring myself to like her and found her so difficult to connect with.

My biggest issue with this though was the way in which Scotland is portrayed. I have heard from Scottish readers, and seen from other reviews, that they found the portrayal of Scotland insulting and honestly I 100% can see why. It was uncomfortable to read, even as a Non-Scot, reducing Scotland to a handful of unflattering stereotypes. I hope that Scottish readers can have their voices heard and their reviews acknowledged on this issue because it is disappointing and understandably a source of anger and frustration for them.

I am conflicted so much about this. I absolutely adore reimaginings of classic tales, so with this being my favourite classical play of all time I was so excited because there’s just so much that could be done.

The writing was beautiful, poetic, with rich tapestries of highlands, magic and murder. The atmosphere was breathtakingly suffocating and dark and the creative interpretations were fabulous.

But the Lady, who I was so excited to hear reclaim her voice, fell a little bit flat to me - she was still very much defined by her relationships to men, shallow and cruel to other women and doesn’t face that moral crises that I was desperately hoping to explore. I wanted to see this powerful woman either own her darkness or find its source but it just didn’t happen.

It’s fact there was sexism, racism, violence and more during the time period and you can’t ignore that, but the gender stereotypes felt so 2-D with all of the Scotsmen being nothing more than mindless, violent brutes and the women being nothing more than mindless, quiet possessions.

With that being said, it IS a fabulous story and I very much enjoyed it parts of it, just not as a reimagining of Lady Macbeth.

This isn’t a Macbeth reimagining in any way so maybe step aside and find an alternative if that is what you specifically want to read at the moment. However, please don’t write this off as you’d be missing out. The novel is a dark and brutal novel about young Roscille who is sent from France to the remote highlands of Scotland to marry a brute of a man, Macbeth. Roscille has to learn to use everything at her disposal, including honing her dark magic, in order to save herself and the innocents around her. As you’d expect from Reid the prose is beautiful and never compromising.
My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own unbiased opinion.

3.5 stars

Headlines:
Gothic
Atmospheric
Grim reading

Lady Macbeth lived up to her name from what I remember of the original play but this was darker in some ways and the witchery was full focus. What started as a young French bride (17 years old) sent off to the remote highlands to marry Macbeth, became a tale of female power influenced by a dark magic.

At first, I thought it was all smoke and mirrors about Roscille's power but I was rather quickly corrected on that assumption. She seemed mousey in character but the reality was that she was a cunning killer. Don't let that colour your thoughts as to that being all there was about her, Roscille was a slave to men's will...her father's, her husband's and other men in the castle. Her manipulations and intent seemed to set the scale more in balance, but maybe a bit too much the other way.

This was a gory read and if you've read Reid's work before, this will be no surprise. The whole vibe of the piece was grim and permeating darkness. There was little to like about any of the characters but they still make for compelling reading.

I liked this book, but I didn't love it. One of the reasons for bringing this rating down a bit was the persistant narrative about the brutality of Scots as a whole nation. They were described as braying, strange, brutish and barbaric. It seemed descriptive overkill to sully a whole nation even in these times.

Thank you to DelRey UK for the review copy.

I really love Ava Reid’s writing style and really did enjoy this book.

But if you are going into this expecting the Macbeth story you know just told from Lady Macbeths perspective you will be disappointed. It’s loosely based on Macbeth but not a direct retelling. If you go into this without those expectations then I’m sure you will enjoy it.

This was a very different view of Lady Macbeth and knowing Reid's previous work, I knew that going in it would not be what I imagined. I love Reid's writing style and this book flowed just as her others have. I really enjoyed it and will read whatever Reid does next.

As a Scottish person and a fairly big fan of Shakespeare’s work, this was a travesty.

Thanks so much for the ARC, but I won’t be reading books from this author in future.

Went into this expecting it to follow the plot of Macbeth a little more closely, and I think those expectations stopped me from getting into the story at the start. But Ava Reid is so great at painting a picture through her pages that I was still ultimately sucked into dark, dreary Glammis alongside Roscille. I'm no expert on 11th century Scotland, so can't confirm if the details were quite accurate, but I did appreciate that it felt like I was getting a little history lesson as I read (aside from some obvious witchy embellishments). This didn't give me a deeper insight to the Lady Macbeth I know so much as it provided an alternate turn of events. One I definitely enjoyed reading, but have conflicting feelings about.

To say I was excited to read Lady Macbeth is an understatement. I have heard so many amazing things about Ava Reid and, even though I’ve never read anything by her myself, I couldn’t resist requesting this reimagining of Lady Macbeth.
So, did it live up to my expectations? The short answer is no. The long answer is noooooooooooooooooo lol seriously though, it was such a disappointment.

I thought I might get lost with the language and names so, not trusting myself, I got the audiobook and I’m relieved I did. Not because I was lost, no but because, at times, I was bored and fear that, if I was just reading via kindle, I would have put it down never to pick it up again! So having the audiobook and being able to listen on x2 speed, I persevered and finished it.

She wasn’t the Lady Macbeth I wanted.
At the beginning I loved her using her youth, nativity and people’s misconceptions of her knowledge as a foreigner coming to a new country as a way to manipulate her husband, Macbeth but as the tale went on, she remained in the same vain, never becoming the strong, powerful & a little mad, Lady Macbeth I expected.
Roscille is a great character but a standard one.
There wasn’t anything unique or captivating about her. It was just like reading so many other fantasies about a young woman trying to break free of her brutish husband.

Lady Macbeth is a good historical fantasy that had some intriguing moments but it’s not the retelling I had hoped for.

Thank you NetGalley & Del Rey UK, for the ebook arc. I am pleased I read it & will add a stunning limited edition to my book collection.

As a Dutch reader I've not grown up with the big English classics. I was introduced to Macbeth in high school. We watched one scene in class and that was it. And where I eventually did end up reading versions of Romeo and Juliette and watching stage plays like Midsummer Night Dream, I never really encountered Macbeth again. So, when I saw this book on Netgalley I mainly requested it because it was written by an author I like. Luckily Del Ray granted me a review copy.

As someone who's not familiar with Macbeth and the original story I had no idea what was waiting for me and what would happen. I'm not sure if that is eventually a positive or a negative thing. I read without expectations. I read this story for what it is, not for what it is based on. For me this is now the story I will remember and the only plot I know. I can't comment on changes, differences or whether or not the characters are like their counterparts in the Shakespeare play or not.

In the beginning I had to get used to the writing style, but towards the end I noticed that I had grown attached to the heroine of the story. I cared about her happily ever after. Roscille represents a lot of girls in this world. Today, in history and unfortunately also in the future. Girls who are not listened to, are not respected, are not seen as anything but a wife and mother. In this story she's not after power. She's mostly after protecting herself from harm and hurt. With disastrous results.

The author does an amazing job making me understand her, though. I understand why she does what she does. I understand why she plays the games she plays. I understand what she's after, what she's preventing and why her methods seem like good ideas. Especially because she's surrounded by men like there are still way too many in the world. They underestimate her, they belittle her, they hurt her and they see her as nothing but a tool. They therefore absolutely and totally had it coming.

I’ve definitely been putting off writing this review, because I love all of Ava Reid’s previous books and I really wish I was writing a review for one of those instead. This one was a disappointment, unfortunately. I wouldn’t have written an honest review for this at all if I wasn’t obligated to by the fact I received an early digital copy of it.

I will preface this by saying that if you’re intrigued to read their take on a gothic retelling, I’d highly recommend Reid’s Juniper and Thorn as an alternative to this. I’m going to stick the rest of this review under a general spoiler tag (and it will have spoilers from across the whole book).

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<spoiler>
The thing that comes to mind first, when thinking about where to start with this review, is how much this book tries to do several different things and doesn’t really commit to any of them, so just leaves an overwhelming feeling that it never comes together as a whole.

There’s an interesting take, somewhere, in the idea of Lady Macbeth being an innocent girl who learns brutality as a way to survive, who is shadowed by what she is becoming – but Reid never commits fully to that idea. I’m always skeptical about that old turn of phrase ‘kill your darlings’, but in this case, I genuinely believe that it felt like the tone only suited a darker ending than the one that we were given. Having read all of Reid’s other books, I think I also recognized that the ending followed the same pattern as their other work, which perhaps made it feel particularly tacked-on.

It’s also strange to me, because I am aware that Ava Reid has issues, as I do, with the Hollywood brand of female empowerment – the female protagonist who is always fully in control of her fate, and never suffers self-doubt or trauma, or acts irrationally. And yet, despite Roscille’s difficulties with such things, this novel seems to also lean into some of those tropes (killing her husband with her eyes at the end felt very much like something out of an old movie.)

It’s also very, very – and this is probably the biggest issue that I had with the book – gender essentialist. Men are all bad in this book – except one man, who we barely see and her relationship with him feels very contrived – and this perspective is constantly reinforced by the events of the novel and by the fact that Lady Macbeth is always shown sympathetically. I would go as far as to say that this novel was actively misandrist, to be honest. It’s particularly frustrating given that there was what felt like a much more nuanced take on male violence in Juniper and Thorn, one of Reid’s earlier works.

And the choice of a Macbeth retelling to tell such a story was a really odd one, given that one of the most interesting things about Shakespeare’s Macbeth is in its disruption of gender norms? It felt, honestly, like Reid started out with the idea of doing a Lady Macbeth retelling, but found that the bones of the story didn’t contain the story that they actually wanted to tell, so they pivoted it to something else. And that’s a huge shame and, to my mind, a missed opportunity.

All of these issues were frustrating, too, because there were definitely parts of this novel that I enjoyed – the writing is some of Reid’s best, the atmosphere is gorgeous, and I loved the depiction of the three witches. But I can’t recommend it, as a whole.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review. </spoiler>

I have so many conflicting feelings over this book.

The positives are Ava Reid's gorgeous prose and atmospheric writing and her ability to explore messy and morally grey female characters.

But this isn't a Macbeth retelling. So much is changed from the original play (at one point this even turns into a literal monster romance) and whilst some changes are interesting, the essence of Shakespearean play is lost (along with some of the most iconic lines and scenes). This story isn't a Macbeth retelling or even a retelling of the real history the play is based upon (although there are some nice nods to it along the way) - it feels like a fanfic about Macbeth where what if Macbeth had been the problem all along and his wife during these events hadn't been the complex murderous iconic villainess we all know but instead a French seventeen year old too-beautiful-for-her-own-good pick me girl (who is literally the only female character for 90% of the book) who is extremely xenophobic.
The xenophobia is the worst part of this book as it is so uncomfortable to read Scots described as all being barbarians and murderers and rapists with no redemption or revaluation of the main characters viewpoint. I am surprised this amount of xenophobia got passed the editorial stage and I really hope Ava Reids team reflects on the response to this and take a better approach going forward.

Overall, the two key issues with this book come down to the marketing not properly conveying how loose a retelling this would be (and deciding to call this book Lady Macbeth when the actual Lady Macbeth is barely in the book) and the xenophobia.

I just wanted to start of saying that I never read Macbeth or seen a stage production so I was going into this book partly blind. Nonetheless, I was looking forward to reading this but I was struggling to get through it. It had so much potential but kinda just felt a little flat. I often found myself skimming this just to get through it which is such a shame. I couldn't even really tell you anything that happened because my mind as just blanked this book out.

Don't get me wrong the actual writing itself is beautifully written but everything else I just couldn't connect with. The pacing was off and it didn't feel like much was happening in order to keep me entertained or wanting for me to continuing reading. I forgot that was considered a fantasy because there wasn't much fantasy elements within in the book, save from the witches towards the end of the book which was it's saving grace for me. Lady Macbeth has magical powers yet barely uses them? Seriously?

The characters were completely one dimensional and lacked any character growth whatsoever. Lady Macbeth is described to be clever, ruthless, ambitious and manipulative but yet we got none of this, she was just a highly unlikeable character. The only characters that were mildly interesting was the witches and they were barely in it. The romance was so out of place as well, I just didn't care for it at all. And on top of all of this, this version of Lady Macbeth is xenophobic where Scottish people are constantly viewed as violet brutes. Was the really necessary? No it wasn't. I don't get why any of it was added in the part.

Trigger Warnings: rape, sexual assault and gore

Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for a honest review.

Thank you the NetGalley, the author and publish for an ARC of this book.

I enjoyed the book overall. The characters were well developed and I enjoyed the world building massively and the supernatural elements. It was creepy and eerie where it needed to be. Roscile and the men in this book all have a power struggle both visible and invisible which was very well played out.

The plot just felt a bit disjointed and I didn’t feel completely hooked to see where it was heading

I've read one other Ava Reid book, and really enjoyed the gothic setting and writing style, so I was really excited to jump into this new one! Unfortunately I just didn't vibe with it - I was so bored and it extremely hard to continue on reading until I finally just decided to call it quits. I just didn't enjoy the main character, and felt let down since i expected so much more out of a retelling!

This review is for Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid which will be released in the UK on the 13th August! Thanks so much to Netgalley and Del Ray for giving me an eArc copy for this book in exchange for my honest review.

I will have to start off this review by saying that this was not what I imagined at all, but that is my own fault for believing people when they say it’s a Macbeth retelling. (It’s literally in the name of the book, why am I so dumb).
It’s definitely a Lady Macbeth retelling for sure, but done in a way I would have never thought. I also think I would have enjoyed this a lot more if I didn’t already have these super high expectations of what it was going to be, so again my fault for sure.

Let’s start with the great points. I loved the atmosphere Reid creates in this book, and they are so good at creating these gothic and beautiful scenes that can transport you to the time. You feel like you are truly there, watching this all happen from above. There’s a touch of paranormal and fairytale elements, which is Ava’s usual style, but it is effortless mixed into the well known Macbeth setting.

But I was honestly a little bored. The FMC was a bit meh, I was expecting this super cunning and strong female character, ready to do what needs to be done. But you get a scared and lonely 17 year old, sold by her father to a brute of a man, just trying to survive into the world she’s been thrust into. I still really liked this character though. You see her growth and learning to understand the limited power she has in the society she’s thrust into, and learns to use her mind and her cunning to get herself out. The book also felt really short and rushed towards the end, such a big build up for such a small ending.

I try not to do a lot of deep diving into the books I read, as I don’t want to fall into the deep, dark hole my English Lit A levels installed in me so I also feel I’m probably missing a lot more subplot and under the surface themes.

It’s definitely worth a read, and I think I would pick this up again in the future.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

The story of Macbeth is so important in English Literature and so many cultural references come from it so I had always been aware of it but have never read or watched the original play. So I came to Lady Macbeth with little idea of what to expect.

The first chapter was a little slow and I wasn’t sure I would be able to connect with the main character but once I got into the story and the pace picked up I found it hard to put down.

I really enjoyed Roscille coming into her own and harnessing her power. The fantasy element was something that I wasn’t expecting but really worked for me.

Although it took me a little while to get used to the writing style, once I did I found it beautiful and engaging.

I thought this was a great perspective on the Macbeth story and it has made me want to read the original text so I can see what inspired