A breathtakingly immersive novel set in ancient Greece, Circe is a novel that ensares you with its weaving stories and seduces you with seductive descriptions.

I couldn’t put this book down, line by line it drew me in, until I found myself turning pages with bated breath as the sun set outside my window.

The daughter of a naiad and Helios the sun god, we are introduced to Circe as a young immortal, lurking in the of her home where Titans lurk in fear of the younger Greek Gods led by Zeus. We get a first foreshadowing of what’s to come when Prometheus is sentenced to his endless punishment.

From there, we follow her life from her first love to feuds to an exiled life on a deserted island as a single mother…this first-person account weaves ancient myths including those of Scylla and Charybdis, Hermes, Apollo, Athena, Daedalus and his son Icarus, Ariadne and the Minotaur (who is Circe’s nephew), Jason and the Golden Fleece, and Odysseus.

This marvelous retelling by Madeline Miller is a triumph of storytelling and women’s perseverance against all odds to fight for the right to live their lives the way they see fit.