The Deep End of the Sea by Heather Lyons

Oh, hell. I hate giving bad reviews, especially on books that most people rave about–I certainly don’t want to put anyone off from reading this book, but it certainly wasn’t for me. I suspect I was an exception.

Disclaimer: I’m all for romance novels. I do enjoy them. I do not enjoy the cheesy kind, though. The ones where the woman only cares about her beloved, only lives for him, only talks and thinks about him. If I read “I’m in love with my best friend!” one more time, I thought I was going to freak out.

I agree with the majority of the Goodreads population that it is a fantastic contemporary take on Greek mythology.

In a nutshell, Medusa, a handmaiden to Athena, is raped by Poseidon and ultimately punished by Athena. This punishment turns Medusa into the myth we’ve all heard of—hair of snakes, eyes that turn men to stone–and she lives in solitude for several thousand years. After a while, her friend, Hermes, petitions the Gods to break the curse and she turns into a regular girl, living in the house of Hades and Persephone while all of the drama between Athena and Poseidon is worked out.

One thing I liked very much about this book was how the author address sexual assault. I’ve read several books where the main character is raped, but emotionally, it doesn’t seem to effect them for more than a few chapters. This book addressed how much it hurt her (even two thousand years later), and how much it effected her relationships with others. It took a lot of self healing for her to get better. There’s also a page in the back of the book that tells sexual assault victims where to go if they need help, which I really appreciated.

I loved that Lyons made Athena a total psycho. I loved that she put a spin on the traditional evil-Medusa story.

I didn’t love the cheesy, horrible love story. It was nauseating, and Hermes was too perfect. In fact, there isn’t a single flaw I can think of. He’s hot, he’s a knight in shining armor, he’s smart, he’s employed, he’s rich…I think the only thing he couldn’t do was write poetry.

In fact, everyone was perfect. Persephone and Aphrodite were so sweet, so sisterly. Bernadette was mean for two seconds, and then became incredibly Grandma-sweet. Jocko was awesome. The only person with some sort of character flaw and depth was Hades, and I appreciated that.

In a nutshell, I did like the first third of the book. I thought I was going to love it as much as all of the other four and five star reviewers…but I didn’t. It fell flat, and I became incredibly bored. Medusa had been so strong for so many years, but the moment her best friend announced his undying love for her, they have a bunch of sex all of the time and she basically fails to stand up for herself until they take a break for a while. Drove me nuts. She could have been an amazingly strong heroine, but she waited for the last three chapters to do so.

I rated it a 3/5 on Goodreads.