Thank you Netgalley and Berkley Publishing Group for a copy of Medusa's Sisters by Lauren J.A. Bear. In exchange for an honest review.

Medusa's Sisters is a captivating reimagining of the classic Medusa myth, breathing new life into the often-overlooked sisters behind the tale. Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale, curious and unique among immortals, venture into the human world in search of belonging, only to be ensnared in the tumultuous web of Olympian rivalry and the harsh realities of divine affection. This novel gives voice to the forgotten Gorgon sisters, shedding light on their journey from obscurity to the edges of the pantheon. While history has often painted them as mere monsters, Bear unveils the humanity beneath their scales, crafting a narrative that explores the intricate balance between sisterhood and individuality, myth and truth. "Medusa's Sisters" is a poignant and enchanting tale that offers a fresh perspective on the complexities of love, identity, and the power of untold stories.

It wasn't until recent years did I find out that Medusa had sisters. In many retellings they were never mentioned or if they were they were background characters to Medusa. However in Medusa's Sisters by Lauren J. A. Bear both Stheno and Euryale take front stage. We follow the story from the beginning of their lives to when they are cursed and the aftermath of it all. Never have I ever wanted to change the ending of a book so badly as I did this one. I say I want to change it, not because it was bad by any means but, because I was heart broken for them all. As many people know the story of Medusa it was refreshing to see it in the eyes of her sisters even if it was very painful to read. As an older sister I related heavily with Stheno and how she felt protective over her siblings. I will be thinking about this book for a long time.

I shed so many tears reading this beautiful book and any other book written by this author I am for sure going to pick up. Thank you NetGalley for the arc!

Pick this book up if you like
-Greek mythology
-Sister hood bonds
-Realistic family dynamics
-Tragic tales

Trigger warnings for: Sexual Assault

I LOVE a retelling and one that centers around the famous story of Medusa is always an automatic yes from me. This book was so interesting, thoughtfully written, and engaging throughout. It is not to say the characters weren't flawed, because they were but this book allowed the reader to see the more human side of The Gorgons and how they came to be the feared creatures we all know and love. I loved reading about each sister, their relationships with each other, and how stories could be skewed to paint women (especially these three) in a negative light. I can't wait to read more from this author.

Rating: 4.5/5
I received an eARC for my honest opinion.

We all know the story of Medusa, but did you know she had sisters? She was one of triplets and they all had a hard and tragic life, but nothing as tragic as Medusa's own ending. In this book you will see how the triplets came to this world, how they were raised, how they lived and what they all dreamed of. You come to understand a little more of the heartache that Medusa had along with the heartache that her death left the world with.

I do love good mythology and this author did not disappoint me at all. I enjoyed all the background on the parents of Medusa and her sisters as well as the history of all the pantheons. The story/plot was well developed, and the pace was well done. I already knew a lot about Medusa, but seeing how her sisters merged into her story and at the same time having a story of their own added in was great. I loved the different POVs from Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa. I loved getting to hear their story about what happened and how they handled the world that they were in.

I thought the sisters each had their own personalities and they all felt real to me, and at times I was able to connect with them. I thought having Medusa’s sisters explain what happened between Athena and Poseidon was done so well that I felt that I was there with them witnessing the heartache that they all felt and the betrayal that Euryale felt from Poseidon. My heart went out to Euryale for that moment and afterwards I thought she was so strong to handle the death of her sister to have to find out what she wanted the most in life and going to get it. I loved that Stheno was the caretaker of the group and watching her go through her own grief after being turned was sad but seeing how she pulled herself out of it to take care of her sisters was beautiful.

I want to say more than I really do, but if I was, I would spoil the book and if you love mythology books you really need to read this one. This book will show you love, beauty, heartache, sacrifice and above all a sisterly bond.

I want to thank NetGalley and Berkley for the opportunity to review this book.

We all know the story of Medusa and her tragic ending. But what do we know of her life? This story gives us a glimpse of that through the eyes of her sisters as they leave their watery home and explore the world of humans, first in Thebes and then Athens. We also get a glimpse of her foe Perseus and how he came to be challenged to face Medusa.

This one reminded me of Natalie Haynes or Jennifer Saint in tone and structure. It has all the tragedy you expect with a mythology story but also offers the feminist spin of women trying to find their own way and not be dictated by a man. Part of the novel reminded me of The Wolf Den. It starts off a little heavy on world building brain dump of every epic Greek god and immortal that you can think of and how they relate to Medusa, it's a bit dense, but press through that and there is a great story beyond.

Thanks to Berkley and Ace for gifted access via Netgalley. All opinions above are my own.

Wow. This story was one for the women.

For most of this book, I did not like Euryale. She came across as selfish, angry, hateful, spiteful, and just plain awful. Of course things change but she was not a character I liked till the end.

Stheno was the protector and caregiver. And ultimately alone. Her character broke my heart over and over again. The way the story starts make you believe she is blood thirsty and evil, but wait till the story unfolds.

Medusa. A mythology legend that was done wrong. Athena and Poseidon both did her dirty. You want justice but nothing ever comes for the gods and goddesses.

Mythology is intriguing but the gods and goddesses were awful beings. The stories about them always have their harshest judgments, their selfish ways, how they take what they want regardless of the consequences, how they punish you for any slight seen against them. Interesting doesn’t make them worthy. However this book told the tale in a unique way and gave the gorgons a voice finally.

Medusa's Sisters by Lauren J.A. Bear tells the untold story of the other Gorgons. The ones no one talks about or remembers. But more then that she tells a story of individuality, sisterhood, longing and loss.

The way that J.A. Bear portrays the women in this book reminds me of the way Jane Austen does. She allows women to be depicted as wanting to love and learn, and she lets them want things. Bear does an incredible job of writing women with distinct and different personalities.

The story of Stheno and Euryale is beautifully written. We get to follow them from a time before they were monsters to after they lost Medusa and every moment is cinematic and amazing.

Perfect for fans of Circe! If you're a lover of Greek myths and captivating storytelling, this is the book for you!

This is my favorite myth adaptation I’ve read. I felt so emotional while reading, Lauren J.A. Bear’s storytelling is visceral. Of the three sisters Stheno, Euryale and Medusa, we mostly get Stheno’s direct point of view and it’s breathtaking. The loss of their humanity, becoming something new and monstrous and the suffering loss after loss—I felt every moment of this story. The characters emotions come through so clearly on the page. This was an unforgettable reading experience and I have to read more from this author!

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a powerful, complex reimagining of Medusa’s story, told from the dual perspective of her sisters, Stheno and Euryale.

Although the beginning moves a little slowly and there is some dissonance in the writing feeling both classical and modern, once it gets moving I was absolutely hooked and burned through it in a couple of sittings.

The story being told from her sister’s perspectives worked really well for opening up and fleshing out not just the details of Medusa’s mythology but the whole world around it. Stheno is the dutiful oldest sister who feels compelled to care for everyone and Euryale is the angry, jealous middle sister. As immortals Stheno and Euryale’s perspective on life is so different to Medusa’s. Her mortality gives her a softness and vitality that her sisters don’t have—which creates a lot of conflict between Euryale and Medusa, while Stheno dotes on and worries over her.

Euryale is painfully self-absorbed and it’s hard to watch the many spiteful choices she makes. I wouldn’t say she redeems herself by the end but she becomes marginally more tolerable. One of two issues I had with the story was how becoming a mother makes her suddenly this serene, better person which, to me, is decidedly unfeminist (in what is supposed to be a subversive/feminist retelling) because as women we’re fed this lie of serene motherhood and how it’s our purpose and having children will be this blissful, beautiful thing that magically transforms us. And while it certainly has moments that are, as a whole the reality of motherhood is so much more volatile and difficult and complex than we’re told it should be, so when we face those difficulties we end up feeling like failures for struggling and not being able to be/live up to that ideal. Having Euryale subvert this idea instead of perpetuate it would have been much more empowering and satisfying.

My other qualm is that, while I loved the sapphic take on Medusa, it doesn’t end up feeling empowering because of how deeply homophobic everyone around her is—and that homophobia is never addressed or questioned. The lack of condemnation and the conversations/internal dialogue that the other characters have around queerness felt really anti-gay and that didn’t sit very well for me. It is a fairly brief moment in the scope of the story but has a large impact and implications within the story, and is something I’m still thinking about after reading. So just a heads up to my fellow queer readers who may also struggle with this aspect of the story.

Overall, it’s a gripping, thought provoking story that really fleshed out the mythology around Medusa and I could hardly put it down.

This book. This book. This book. It’s everything. It is story of sisters, of apologetic and unapologetic monsters, of women when there is little record women had stories too. All this told just as the time to heroes was starting…when many of those said monsters were slain. I loved these stories. But the cherry on the cake was that writer derived this tale from all the stories of heroics of men..all the songs and stories written so long ago. Who knew there were such rich stories of women hiding in them.

3.5 Stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Ace Books/Berkeley Publishing for an ARC! The following are my 100% honest thoughts and feelings.

I’ve always found the different variations of mythological stories fascinating and I think that’s why I love retellings of myths and am eager to pick them up. Medusa’s story is a myth that has many different ways of looking at it and so I was intrigued to see this author’s take on the tale. Overall, I liked it. I wouldn’t say it especially blew me out of the water, in fact at times I felt it was a bit too slow and, I’m sorry, a bit boring. However, I did like the weaving of different myths. It was interesting to she the author tell certain stories as though they were all connected by filling in the blanks with other stories. I did love the sisters’ complex relationship and how that was explored. I didn’t love the reason for Athena’s punishment. Something about it just put me off and I unfortunately don’t know how to explain it. The end did make me tear up a little though. So as you can see, I have a lot of mixed feelings and therefore felt like the average rating was the best fit. I’d recommend it, still, to those who also like myth retellings, especially Medusa retellings, because I think this was a very unique one to add to the cannon.

TW: Sexual assault, death/loss of loved ones

I love Greek mythological retellings and Medusa’s Sisters may just be my new favorite. The author has successfully flipped the script on the infamous Medusa and her sisters Euryale and Stheno. Forget the celebration of Perseus, this female empowered retelling evoked every emotion, ultimately breaking my heart.

In all honesty- I struggled in the beginning of the story. The exploration of the sister’s past, while immersive and so well done, left me confused at times. The differing perspectives and my personal inability to keep names straight was a tough combination. However, the moment the sisters are betrayed and changed into the now infamous Grogons, I was captivated.

Lauren J.A Bear has a beautiful style of writing. Certain passages read lyrically at times. For anyone familiar with the story of Medusa- this tale covers heavy themes. Between the shedding of light on each individual sister, it is impossible not to feel extreme empathy for Steno, Euryale and Medusa.

I did a combination of the audio and the ebook and found both to be extremely well done. The differing perspectives are handled with dual narrators on the audio which helped ease some initial confusion.

Despite my initial setbacks, I ultimately found Medusa’s Sisters to be moving and powerful. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5, I highly recommend readers check out Medusa’s Sisters!

A big thank you to NetGalley and Berkeley Publishing Group for an eARC of this title in exchange for an honest review!

As the title implies, this is the story of Medusa’s Sisters, Stheno and Euryale. The story starts at the 3 sisters birth, to Medusa’s end, and then a few years after.

The story is grisly, and if you are sensitive to any major trigger warnings please look them up before hand (or message me)! It was an interesting take on the myths, I feel it stayed very true to much of the source material, keeping the story harder to read at times as it shone a very direct light on the suffering women went through in these tales.


This book was cruising for 3 stars for me, as I could recognize the craft and work that had gone into this story, but it didn’t really resonate with me as much as I hoped. The pacing would also pick up and slow down, making the story drag at times. I felt that much of the first half could’ve been edited down slightly to improve this. I also read Stone Blind earlier this year which I inevitably kept comparing this to, and overall preferred. However, the ending chapters of this book were something new and interesting, and pushed my overall rating to about 3.5 stars. I would for sure recommend if you’re a Greek mythology retelling lover.

I will say that one frustrating aspect of this book was the overly complex language used. I (obviously) read a lot, and consider myself to have a decently wide vocabulary, but the amount of times I had to look up words with the dictionary function on my kindle felt silly. It’s not that you couldn’t understand the story as these words were mostly adjectives and could be discerned with context clues, but it felt at times like the author was intentionally using any synonym she could think of for fairly straightforward sentences. I’m glad I read it on my kindle so I could easily look up words, ha!

This book published yesterday 8/8 so be sure to add it to your TBR if you think it would be up your alley!

I had the privilege of snagging an early copy of Lauren J. A. Bear's debut novel, Medusa's Sisters.

And when I say privilege - I mean it. This book was incredible.

If you're a girl who grew up reading Percy Jackson and loved Greek myths, this is for you. Fans of Madeline Miller's Circe and Song of Achilles should be grabbing this as soon as they can.

The book tells the myth of Medusa, but from the point of view of her two sisters. It goes through their lives before they were turned into gorgons and continues through after Medusa's eventual death.

The sister dynamic is explored so beautifully and with such realistic details. The desire to love your family but also be your own person is written perfectly and pulls at your emotions.

Bear's word choice is poetic throughout the story and it reads like a Greek epic. Everything is vivid and the feelings are raw. The incorporation of actual poetry throughout is also beautiful without distracting from the story.

I also loved hearing the tale of Medusa from a new perspective. Everyone knows her as the villain, but villains aren't born that way and sometimes there is more to the story.

Having the digital ARC has been lovely, but I'm going to have to physically have this on my bookshelf at some point. It's a keeper.

This was a powerful retelling of the story of Medusa and her sisters, and is kind of what I'd looked for in Natalie Haynes' Stone Blind but didn't get. The story alternates between Stheno's first-person narrative and a limited third-person narrative for Euryale, which took some getting used to. At first I found it jarring, but I got used to it the longer I read. As I didn't really like Euryale, I was happy not to be in her head for her chapters.

The first third of the book or so was a little slow for me. They are born and growing up and not much is happening except to show us immortality, the relationship between the sisters, their mother, and a few of their other relations. As the sisters (who can pass as human at this stage) decide to travel and learn about humans things pick up. Other stories are woven in and we learn the sisters' personalities as they learn about humans. Stheno is the protector, Euryale the self-absorbed flirt, Medusa the ever-curious and innocent.

This story probably has the best reason (if you can call it that) for why Athena cursed the sisters after Poisidon raped Medusa of any version I've read. Certainly the most personal, selfish, and heartbreakingly awful one. The author doesn't shy away from reminding us that Greek culture, like the myths, didn't place much importance on women and rape was a regular thing that men were not usually held accountable for. Or that women were generally blamed for. There is certainly victim blaming for Medusa. So consider most of the book a trigger warning, if you hadn't already assumed that by the idea that this was about Medusa and her sisters. The author doesn't gloss over much.

Without giving away spoilers, I can't get too specific on much. I was surprised to learn this was a debut novel- the writing was mostly better than I expect from debut novelists (although there was a lot more "if I had but known" writing than I needed). At the same time, I'm not sure the author had quite figured out how to end the book and it seemed to get a little awkward again towards the end.

The women take their stories back here in ways you expect and also in stories and ways you don't expect. Medusa's death and what comes after are powerfully and emotionally written and actually brought me to tears in a few places. This is definitely one of the most powerful retellings I've read.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Anything Medusa I am going to love, she is my baby. I loved the idea of someone writing a retelling involving her sisters, told by her sisters.
From the first page I was already emotional. Bear took time to pull from several stories and they all played off one another so well.
In the end this is a wonderful debut novel and I look forward to her next novel.

This was a great edition to all those other greek stories that have been going around the last few years. If you are into mythology then check this one out. I had a fun time reading it and it really opens your eyes about how life would be if you were immortal and living among those who are not. I had a hard time putting this one down when it was time to get things done.

What's it about (in a nutshell):
Medusa's Sisters by Lauren J.A. Bear is a story about Medusa's life before she was cursed and killed, told in the style of a Greek tragedy.

My Reading Experience:
Bear states in the author's note, "Every woman has a voice that matters, a story worth telling." And she does just that with Medusa and her sisters. She tells a riveting and tragic tale of three sisters born to Phorcys (God of the sea's hidden dangers)and Ceto (Goddess of sea monsters) during the Golden Age of the Titans. Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa were born triplets, though Medusa came out looking like a human and mortal. In contrast, her sisters were born immortal and had attributes of sea monsters, particularly their eye color.

This is a journey story - a journey for the sisters to learn about the world of man and a journey of self-discovery for each of them. I loved watching them explore the world and all that humans and Gods are and how they interact. It is very descriptive of the world of mythology. Gods and Goddesses do not come out looking very good, as they regularly use humans to their own ends. They treated humans as lesser creatures they could use and abuse at will, presenting a tragic tale that the Greek playwrights could have only wished they had told. And Medusa, even though she wasn't truly human, is the saddest story of all.

I just loved this story, even though it broke my heart. I never knew Medusa's back story, and the one pieced together in this novel is full of wonder and goodness that turns dark and challenging. It's not one of a monster that needs slaying but one of the sister creatures cursed by a Goddess, punished by a God, and left to defend themselves on a lonely island in the middle of the sea.

The writing is beautiful - positively poetic in places, as you can see from my quote under "Characters." It flowed so ethereally that I was instantly drawn into this world and could revel in its wonder and beauty. I can't say enough good things about the writing, and I loved that it is in the style of a Greek tragedy (play). That was the perfect format for this story.

Characters:
I don't think I could even begin to describe Medusa better than Stheno does in the Prologue: "Medusa rarely angered. She was ebullient, the paradigm of magnanimity. Liquid sunrise poured into her soul, and she woke each morning full of hope. Even after all her suffering, if she were given the opportunity, I do not think she would have fought back."

“I am the vengeful sister. Me, Stheno. The hateful pariah who murdered more men than either of the other two Gorgons combined." However, she (Stheno) is also harsh in her own description. Stheno was her sisters' protector, always trying to balance letting them do their own thing and ensuring no harm came to them. I wouldn't describe her as vengeful - just protective, as a mom would me or the oldest sister in this case.

Euryale is the middle sister and wants, more than anything, to marry a God and live on Olympus. She studies love between a man and a woman to learn what it is and how to please a man so she can transfer that knowledge to appeal to the God of her choosing.

Narration & Pacing:
The story is told in third-person and first-person narration in alternate chapters. Stheno's chapters are in the first person, and Euryale's are in the third person but focused on her perspective. This sounds a bit confusing, but it all flows seamlessly and poetically. The pacing is more of a medium pace but is consistent throughout the story.

Setting:
The story takes place in Ancient Greece, a totally expected and appropriate setting for a story based on Greek mythology.

Read if you're in the mood for:
A Greek tragedy/Greek mythology
A riveting tale that brings out all the emotions
A sister-theme story

This book is definitely one of my top reads of 2023, and I’ve read a lot of Greek retellings as it’s kind of my favorite genre. Bear does an incredible job of bringing these “monsters” into real flesh and blood beings with families, hopes, and dreams.

If you loved Circe, Clytemnestra, or The Song of Achilles, this book is for you!