The Harpy was an extremely well planned book with descriptive characters and amazing plot twists that tore my heart in two - but in a fascinating, sobering way. This book was written to illustrate real life situations - things that happen to so many people - whether they want to admit it or not. This novel was provocatively honest to the point of being brutal but sometimes we need a "slap in the face" to wake ourselves up. The main character, Lucy, has to deal with her husband Jake's mistake and tries to move past it but like so many of us women who devote our lives to our families - it just wasn't possible for Lucy to act like nothing had happened. I was gripped by the devastation and sorrow that Lucy demonstrated throughout the book and the ending was one of a kind. I absolutely recommend this book. It is a sobering account of what could happen to anyone. Excellent read!

I wanted to love this book. I was meant to LOVE this book. So why didn't I love this book? The Harpy is written beautifully and tells the tale of a woman on the edge, unravelling over the course of the demise of her relationship. Hunter's prose is lyrical, poetic, but perhaps too poetic for its own good, leaving much to be desired in terms of plot or concrete action. I think fans of serious literary fiction might enjoy this, but for me, I needed just a touch more.

This book was a bit difficult for me to fully get into. I thought the plot was interesting - Lucy is our main character and she is busy with her children and marriage to Jake and the endless balancing act of life. One day, she gets a phone call and finds out Jake is cheating on her. She decides to punish her husband to make up for his sins. From there, we see her slowly descent into madness.

The Harpy is a dark look at marriage but overall was well-written and had poetic prose.

This is something. Wow. That writing! I literally sat here and read this in one sitting. And with four young children, that is absolutely impossible for me.

This is one of those books that the universe sends me every once in a while when I really *need* something and I'm pretty sure it will be my favorite book of 2020, which is saying a lot because there is nothing good about 2020. Absolutely a favorite of all time, and I will definitely reread it more than once. (And that cover!)

Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a copy of this ARC.

Jake is married to Lucy, when Lucy discovers that he has been having and affair they agree that Lucy can hurt Jake 3 times and he won't know when or how he will be hurt. Lucy has a longstanding obsession with harpies, mythical creatures that inflicted pain on men and as they progress deeper into their new dynamic the boundaries between her and the harpy start to blur. The premise was intriguing, it is rare we get to see women inflict hurt and revel in it but I struggled with this, not sure if that says more about our social conditioning and how we view women. This book was not for me.

The Harpy was my first book by Megan Harper and I chose it purely by the fascinating cover!

Lucy is a typical stay at home mother and takes pride in the fact that she is a good wife and mother. But when she finds out her husband has been having an affair with his co-worker Lucy's life is turned upside down. In a bazaar turn, Lucy and Jake decide that she will have three opportunities to punish him as pay back for his affair.

Although this is a shorter book, I found it difficult to get through as I just didn't care about the characters and the plot as it was just not believable to me. The prose style was also not something I was familiar with in a typical novel.

This sucked me in straight away. I usually enjoy books about adultery just because you never know where it will go. That is definitely true for this one, and I became so invested in this couple and the darkness wrapped up in their relationship. There were moments when I had to stop reading because I was so stressed about the situation. I love that!

This would be a 5-star book for me if it hadn't been for the ending. I remember saying to myself, "Where is the book I was enjoying so much?" It felt like the ending was tacked on from somewhere else, like an afterthought. I think something much simpler would have been more satisfying. I still recommend the read, and I look forward to the next one from Megan Hunter.

As I started the book, it seemed to me it would be too much of an indulgent revenge fantasy story, and it is definitely that, but it’s also an addictive read and with surprising depth. There is definitely no shortage of books about infidelity in marriage, but this one definitely stands out with its daring plot.

The author tries to give us glimpses of the life of Lucy and how she came to have this violence inside her, how the patterns of the life of her parents repeated themselves and so on, which I found a bit overdone. The interesting thing about the story, for me, was that she could have been any wife, any woman who’s been cheated on and fantasized about taking revenge. By giving Lucy so much backstory, it felt to me that she was over-explained.

If you enjoy stories about messy women making bad choices on purpose (this reminded me a bit of Supper Club in that regard: a story about women’s hunger for darker things than society expects them to), then I think this will be an enjoyable read! If you hope for a literary work with a deep exploration of relationship dynamics, violence and guilt (as I did), then you will be disappointed – this is more a revenge story that also showcases the daily pressures, trauma and violence women go through. I also expected a more lyrical prose (the blurb talks of poetic prose), but found it quite regular. As a last and petty complaint, I love magical realism in a story, and I really liked the harpy allegory, but I did not think the magical part of the story was well-executed, it felt clunky and forced.

In the end, I enjoyed the read and devoured this book, but I doubt it will be very memorable for me down the line. This is Megan Hunter’s sophomore book, and I think it was a very intriguing one even though I did not love it, and I will keep an eye out for her next books.

𝐈𝐟 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭, 𝐈 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞: 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐰𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧. 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐰𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲- 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫- 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧.

Can a person ever come out even in trying level the scars of love? Can you transfer the boundless emotional pain your beloved has caused you through their flesh? Before the knowledge of her husband Jake’s betrayal, Lucy spends her days caring for her two sons and being absorbed into their home like a second skin. It’s a peaceful afternoon, caught up in the routine of preparing her children their after-school snacks and starting dinner when the ringing phone jars her out of her thoughts. On the other end, David Holmes reveals to her that her husband Jake is sleeping with Vanessa. Vanessa… a much older woman, shocking to imagine, working in the same department at the university as Jake but “he was just being nice”, helping her settle in, that was the story if there was ever a flare of jealousy. Vanessa, so far removed from Lucy and her youthful, inelegant existence-how could he possibly… and with her!

Jake is tearfully sorry, ashamed, earnest in his bid for forgiveness and willing to do anything, never imaging how far Lucy will go. At the heart of her rage lives the harpy. It is monstrous, this pain! This isn’t how she imagined her life to be, becoming a sad woman, a joke. Will three times be enough(the agreed upon terms), three times he will submit to punishment? Could this be enough to move on, this ‘slip’ of Jake’s something they can bury in the past, that can one day mean nothing in the grand scheme of their life?

When another humiliation tears the scab in Lucy’s heart, it is a bone she isn’t content to chew. It is an explosion in her brain imaging the intimacy between Jake and his lover, thinking of the piles of lies. Jake will submit to one more hurt, one more time, and it is final. “She still thinks she knows what she is doing”. This is a painful story, the beast that burrows into marriage, as mean as a demon. How we contort ourselves in an attempt to repair what we ourselves have pulverized. How the victim becomes the perpetrator, as if betrayal can be erased by balancing out wrongs.

It is shocking to the end but the depth of the novel is the dissection of marriage itself. Marriage is a wasting disease, once malignancy sets in, be it other people or ourselves. It is a dangerous game to play, dishing out blame and punishment, because we have to factor our own brutality into the advances we make. Lucy is in control of the game, but maybe not herself. She is a woman scorned, hell hath no fury is hyperbole, put into action revenge is often misconceived. Oh this novel, it dredges the ugliest depths of pain and gives birth to the monster within. I felt for Lucy and was ashamed of what she starts to become. Jake is only human, with all the weakness that entails, someone you can resent and sympathize with- that is the real world. In love, it isn’t always easy to define who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’, it’s far messier than that.

Definitely add this novel to your reading list and it must be noted that the cover is wonderful and fitting.

Publication Date: November 3, 2020

Grove Atlantic

Grove Press

Even if it's well written and the characters are fleshed I couldn't warm up to this story and it fell flat.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I will update this with a longer review in a few days, but I could not put this book down. I actually opened it by accident on my kindle, originally planning to tackle this book next month, but within a few paragraphs, I was "allowing" myself to read a few more and then a few more until I had to stay in the book. This is utterly quotable and completely original while dealing with an unoriginal premise.

I don't often read books with this level of poetic language and before this would have said it wasn't my thing or that it would be too difficult to be sucked into but that would be false. The beauty of the writing is precisely what captivates you. We've all read books about scorned women but none with this mythological manifestation behind it.

The Harpy morphs in and out of reality with ease and I cannot wait to make design boards. It could be the most talked-about indie art film of an era if the images in my mind were captured. The strong sense of symbolism is so present, I would almost say Lucy's revenge that builds through the book is way more than a woman scorned or a hurt woman boiling over, she represents women in general who stuff their pain deep inside until a creature of revenge and anger manifests with an uncontrollable rage.

I look forward to discussing this book with my friends when it's published. There is so much to discuss.

Lucy is a devoted wife and mother, squeezing in freelance work around picking up the boys, cooking, cleaning, maintaining their family routines.

When a man calls to tell Lucy that her husband, Jake, is having an affair her world is turned upside down. How can she have done everything right and still be so wronged?

Lucy and Jake stay together, but it is agreed that she can even the score and hurt him three times, however and whenever she chooses. As her dark punishments begin she is drawn her away from the woman she has been playing and deep inside herself, unable to stop rebelling against what it means to be a good wife, a good mother, and a good person.

The Harpy is packed full of sentences that made me hold my breath and fold myself inward. I had a sense of being pulled into thick dark waters, reading it was like looking at something you really don't want to see but can't possibly look away. Reflecting so many of the small experiences of motherhood from such a dark and twisty perspective made this an unforgettable read and at just 167 pages I lapped it up in a day.

*This review may contain spoilers.*

The writing style is distinct and fanciful—it took me a while to get into its rhythm, but it works well for this story that is mostly stream of consciousness told from Lucy’s point of view. Lucy is a very flawed but relatable character. I was on team Lucy from the first page.

Lucy finds out her husband has cheated, and it makes her question her own present, past and future. At times she even steps out of herself and the point of view switches to third person, narrated sometimes by the harpy that Lucy has obsessed about her whole life.

This is another novel that doesn’t have quotation marks, which seems to be very popular right now. In this case, it adds to the surreal quality of many scenes—we are totally in Lucy’s mind, and we are not sure if it is completely sound as she contemplates her husband’s actions.

Lucy and Jake come to an agreement that will “fix” what he has done. Lucy’s actions are a little over the top, but I felt her anger and humiliation so strongly that I wanted her to inflict even more pain on Jake. This is a short, suspenseful read—I didn’t want to put it down.

The cover of The Harpy is bizarre, so I probably should have expected parts of this book to be bizarre as well. The novel takes on a very fairy tale quality, which suits the story to a point, but it left me feeling a bit cheated of an actual ending—I wanted a little more clarity.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for an ARC copy of this novel.

The Harpy was high on my TBR list this year. From the gorgeous and interesting cover, to the promise of a dark and twisted, almost folklore fairy tale of planned punishment/revenge via inflicted violence (three times), from a woman betrayed by her husband with his workplace affair, this one sounded unlike anything I had read before, and just the kind of crazy I really enjoy in a book! Whilst the writing style was interesting and almost poetic, the story however did not deliver for me unfortunately. The author did a great job at keeping the suspense slowly building throughout the book, which kept me engaged and eager to find out what was going to happen next, but the ending kind of ruined my overall experience and high expectation of the story. I was hoping for a big build up of the always-present emotional tension and a great ending, but was left a little confused to be honest, even with the allusion to/of Harpies scattered in between the pages.
Thanks to Grove Atlantic, Net Galley and Megan Hunter for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Harpy is a very unique and strange story- not particularly in the subject matter, but certainly in the delivery. I found the prose to be very eery and transfixing, though I ultimately found the execution of the story to be a bit disjointed. I do recommend this short novel, but I am not quite convinced that I fully enjoyed it.

Megan Hunter's prose is as spell-binding as ever. I really enjoyed her debut but knew even as I read it that it would not stick with me: "But sometimes I like books told in style and glitter and beautiful sentences." This book is different - the prose is deliberately over the top and overwritten, stunningly so, but still A LOT, whereas The End We Start From was deliberately sparse in a way that I prefered. However, this book has stuck with me and I cannot quite stop thinking about it. It is so very clever but was ultimately, for me at least, let down by its vague ending that did not work as well as the unflinching honesty the rest of the book possessed. I rounded up my rating anyways because of the aforementioned cleverness.

Told from a close first person narration by Lucy, as former PhD-student of the Classics who now lives her life as a stay-at-home mum of two who occasionally free-lances, this book is a look at motherhood and relationships. The book starts with Lucy finding out that her husband has been cheating on her and them agreeing to her being allowed to hurt him, three times. Interspersed are prose-poem like asides about harpies, the subject of Lucy's abandoned PhD project. Lucy is, before everything else, resentful; resentful of the way her life has turned out, resentful of her husband, resentful of the other parents at her children's school, and yes, often resentful of the time her children demand of her. Jake is not a bad man, he is present and an active part in their children's lives but still - most of the mind-numbingly boring parts of motherhood are managed by Lucy alone - driving the children to school and to their different activities, making sure they have snacks, that they are clothed properly and so on, and Lucy resents that. It feels like she is even a little bit relieved when Jake's affair comes to light because it gives her anger a focus, a reasonable excuse to give in to the swirling feelings she has. Lucy is difficult to root for because she is so grimly unhappy and humourlessly mean - but she is also stuck in a situation she never wanted to be in and as such I could not help but feel for her. Her husband has the job she was on a trajectory on, being a university lecturer at an unnamed university (it does feel like either Oxford or Cambridge from the way their town is described), her ambition left her but not enough for her to be happy with her life as it is.

Content warning: self-harm, alcohol abuse, cheating, domestic abuse, vomit, suicide

Lucy and Jake are a young-ish married couple with two kids. The story revolves around Jake's infidelity and its impact on Lucy. It's surely an interesting take on the mental health issues faced by someone because it gets into the mind and the disturbed thinking that happens along the way. What isn't quite so obvious until later is the way events earlier in her life have also affected Lucy. It's only towards the end we get any feel for that aspect of her thinking and I think that is more key to her mental health than what is currently happening in her life.

While this is a really short book, I found it really hard to finish this. I'm not quite sure what the problem for me was but perhaps it just wasn't a good fit. Throughout the story are mythological references, particularly to harpies, but I don't think I felt that link to the events in Lucy's life the way it was intended. But I can appreciate some of the intent and so I would give this three stars.

I would like to thank Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for sharing this advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I adored this book. A women's husband has an affair and with his agreement she punishes him in three unique ways. The novel trips along at an even pace then spins an end that will drop you on your head. Unforgettable!

The Harpy was heart-wrenching, and incredibly real. What appears as magical realism in concept is a brutal tale of adultery, motherhood, trauma, and mental health.

I had wanted to love The End We Start From, Megan Hunter's first book but rated it low. I felt at a loss because the writing was so beautiful, the author clearly talented.

Everything that I wanted from The End We Start From, Hunter delivered for me in The Harpy. It has a stronger structure, grounded narrative, and established an attachment to the main character which invested me in her story.

The Harpy is poetic but accessible, haunting yet bright. I truly enjoyed this modern fairy tale. Somehow it reminded me of Margaret Atwood's "Hairball", which is high praise indeed.

[This eARC was generously provided to me by Grove Atlantic via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

I am left speechless by this, it was a deeply affecting read, an emotionally intense journey of a woman coping with the discovery of her husband's affair and the long lasting effects of trauma she experienced earlier in life.
Lucy is a stay at home mom to two boys while she works from home as a writer, she has been a good wife and mother but things take a dark turn in her life when she discovers her husband Jake has been having an affair with his co-worker Vanessa. As a way for her husband to make up for the pain she has suffered they both agree to a warped decision that she will punish him three times. At each instance that Lucy inflicts the hurt to Jake, memories of the past begin to surface haunting Lucy more deeply than she ever imagined. Without trying to give away more than I should of the synopsis, this truthfully had trigger issues for me, not Lucy and Jake's relationship per se but the memories that surfaced are what touched a point for me. I would not have chosen the direction Lucy took with Jake, would have dumped him in a New York minute but her scarred memories are something that can be related to. This was deep for me but I also felt like it was a window to Lucy's mindset and her reasoning. Recommended.

Thank you to author Megan Hunter and NetGalley for this copy in exchange for my review.