Thank you to NetGalley and Ava Reid for the advanced copy.

I wanted to love this book since I loved A Study in Drowning, but it missed the mark for me. Everything that was described about this book made me so excited for it and yet I was left feeling disappointed by most everything. The feminism, the magic, the world, the love- all of it left me wanting for something more or different, I’m not even sure.

I will say, I gave it 3-stars because Ava Reid is an amazing writer, and her prose were beautiful. I think the issues overall were with the story itself. Maybe I just wasn’t who this story was meant for, as I know many who have loved it, but I loved Macbeth and just feel this was missing something.

Give it a shot and see what you think. From reading it myself and other reviews, I believe this is one of those books you either love or don’t. So, give it a read a decide for yourself!

DNFed (perhaps soft DNFed?) at 20%. (Rating 3 stars because I do love Ava Reid, but this book was more like a 2-star read for me, based off the portion that I read.)

I really wanted to love this book, because Ava Reid has done some fantastic work (particularly A Study in Drowning) and her writing is beautiful. There's no doubt that Ava Reid is talented.

However, I became so frustrated in the beginning of this book that I could not continue reading. The first chapter alone is so full of infodumping / exposition and switches back and forth between names and titles of characters (sometimes multiple times within a paragraph), that I was constantly flipping back to the dramatis personae and was still left confused. Now, I want to clarify by saying that I'm not averse to complex narratives, large casts of characters, or the use of cultural specifics. But there's a way to weave these things into the narrative in a way that doesn't give the reader an immediate headache. There were also many instances of Roscilla watching things happen and then explaining them to the reader in large chunks of narration, with little dialogue being exchanged.

I could still have excused this, because I've powered through plenty of books with rocky world setup in the beginning, but as the narrative continued I found that there were other larger issues.

For one, there was a concerning amount of xenophobia/prejudice against the Scots, depicting them all (and all their customs) as evil, backwards, oafish and violent simply for the reason that they were Scots.

Similarly, the "feminist" commentary was extremely heavy-handed. The reader was constantly being reminded of the patriarchal nature of the world in a very "telling not showing" kind of way. Every man was made out to be an irredeemable, misogynistic brute at heart, and this was again told to us rather than shown, creating inconsistent characterization. For example, Macbeth is described as a brute, but whenever he is alone with our main character Roscilla (Lady Macbeth) he is polite and decently respectful. So, he's a brute because he's a man? And because he shot a bird with an arrow as part of a wedding ritual to demonstrate his strength as a warrior?

The narrative also constantly emphasizes Roscilla's victimhood, and she lacks agency in ways that go beyond just "the patriarchy." Now, I understand women's power is often limited or perverted under the patriarchy, and even more so in earlier times, and I love me a good feminist commentary. However, women have always found a way to try to exert whatever power they can, and I didn't feel like that was happening. We were TOLD that Roscilla is a schemer, and she does start off some major events through one of her schemes, but it all comes across as selfish and naive rather than "morally gray" and intelligent. Like, she doesn't consider that encouraging her husband to start a war so she doesn't have to sleep with him would result in many innocent deaths until much later? And then is just like "oopsie, but they're all men anyway, and they're probably assholes to their families who'd be better off without them"??

Overall, I am sad to say that I was really disappointed by this book. I have loved Ava Reid's work in the past and I hope to again, but this was not for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

in ava reid’s bloody, gothic reimagining of shakespeare, lady macbeth reclaims her power.

lady roscille arrives in her husband’s court as a frightened bride, sent to wed a man renowned for his violence. she is a woman alone in a cold, brutal land. if she hopes to survive, she will have to rely on her own cunning and mysterious witchcraft.

it’s been years since i’ve read macbeth, but i love a morally gray FMC and roscille is exactly that. her transformation from new bride to lady macbeth is so satisfying to witness, but i also appreciated reid’s larger exploration of power, ambition, and women’s roles through not only roscille but the three witches, her handmaidens, and even her stepmother.

readers seeking a faithful macbeth retelling may be disappointed; reid takes liberties here and even i didn’t necessarily love all of them. i would have preferred more schemes and less magic, and the ending tied everything up a little too neatly for my tastes; it felt at odds with the majority of the book.

and i have to end on reid’s gorgeous, atmospheric prose. it is truly lovely, even at its bloodiest (and there is *a lot* of blood here), and effortlessly transports the reader to a dark, eerie castle in remote scotland.

Ava wrote the perfect embodiment of Shakespeare's Lady MacBeth while somehow making her completely different. She is cunning and patient. She’s out for blood, but only for those who hurt her. And it’s about time we got to hear her side of the story.

More stories from the POV of historically-maligned women, please!

I really enjoy Ava Reid’s writing and loved the writing style of this novel. I also enjoyed the approach to the retelling and reimagine of the original. I think what was missing for me was wanting to care more about our main characters and feel more of an emotional connection to them. This was a 3.5✨ overall for me.

Before even reading this, I was a bit apprehensive about picking up another Ava Reid novel as I always wish to love one by this author, I found that her novel's typically don't work for me. This is, by far, my least favorite. I found this rather disappointing. Ava Reid's writing always draws me in and I was hopeful that I would finally find one to love.

This, though, had little that I really enjoyed. The supposed cunning aspect of Roscille didn't felt real and being singular from her point of view was exhausting. There were parts of this that felt thrown in just to make this a fantasy and I really just did not like reading this.

I am disappointed that I didn't like this but I do think that there is an audience that will truly love this book.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

Ava Reid hits again!

I've never been a big Shakespeare person, but this makes me want to dive back in.

Ava Reid's writing always pulls me into the atmosphere of each book she writes is amazing.

What an interesting writing style. It was so beautiful. However, for the story itself I was not in love with Roscille or really connected with her even though she is a unique fmc. Definitely done in a different way than most books but I just didn’t connect with it very well.

Ava Reid's Lady Macbeth bears no resemblance to Shakespeare's character, nor to the Holinshed's Chronicles where he drew his historical inspiration. Scotland and her people, culture, language and landscape are unrecognizable here. This novel cherry picks names of people and places of the actual Macbeth story from more modern historical sources, as well as the Bard's famous witches and their portents. But that's all readers get from previous tellings of Macbeth, which need not have been a bad thing. Lady Macbeth's back story and diving into her motivations and personality would have really given this novel dimension. However, that's not what readers are given about the young bride. There are several themes that arise multiple times in nightmarish fashion: animals' teeth biting, claws, sexual abuse, death, suicide, and lots and lots of blood. Only Freud could make sense of these psycho-sexual images. To the average reader they are disturbing and repulsive. This is "a tale... full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"!

Uh, what was this?

I know Roscille is being made to seem like some perfect, pretty polyglot, but she comes off as dumb, gullible, and pretentious. But don't worry. She's not like the other girls.

The witchcraft could've been cool. It's not. We're stuck with veiled Roscille, who has magic eyes that make a man do anything. Except some men. They're immune.

We touched on Melusina, that mermaid myth I greatly enjoyed in the House of Plantagenet, but then it went nowhere. Seriously. It's never mentioned again.

If I see the words "King," or "Queen Hereafter," ever again, I will riot.

Again, after my Del Rey backlog is done, I'm out.

📚 Buddy read with Zana

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey

Lady Macbeth is a feminist reimagining of Shakespeare's Macbeth that gives a voice to the infamous villainess, Lady Macbeth. It is dark and gothic in atmosphere, disturbing in all the best ways, brimming with haunting metaphors and prose that is both poetic and raw, beautiful yet brutal.

This is a story of female rage, the kind that starts out quiet, cold and contained, that begins to simmer as the story progresses until it boils over and consumes everything in its wake. It is a rage that seeps through the pages, that imbues itself in its reader's minds, festering and building until reaching catharsis in tandem with Roscille. This is a story about a woman exploited, forced to weaponize her unearthly beauty, whose very survival depends on her embrace of the role of a villain. This is a story about a woman desperate to seize back her autonomy from a world that will not extend her its mercy, offering up endless cruelty instead, even if it means choosing, at the very least, her death.

I will never tire of singing praises about the way that Ava Reid writes about the female experience, and she, in turn, never ceases to amaze me with the way she continuously explores different aspects of it with each of her books. To me, Ava Reid's works combined are a tapestry of the female experience. She has created something truly special in writing Roscille's story and giving her a voice that echoes that of so many other women throughout history.

I've said this before and I'll continue to say it again and again: it is a gift to live in a lifetime where Ava Reid's books exist.

People love this book. Just go to BookTok or Goodreads and you’ll see lots of love for it and really great reviews that talk in length about why this book is a masterpiece. And they are all probably accurate. The characterwork is really solid and Reid does a great job of humanizing one of Shakespeare’s main villains (she’s a villain, right? It gets unclear sometimes outside of like Iago).

“Gnome, it feels like there’s a but coming...”

Yeah…I’m just not a fan of Shakespeare inspired novels. I love gothic genre fiction but gosh once it adds Shakespeare into the mix, I’m out. Thus this book is a big “it’s not you, it’s me” book. It’s obviously a great book and you can see that from the countless other great reviews out there. I really like EmmaSkies’ reviews of it on TikTok but it just wasn’t for me.

This was a very interesting take on Macbeth. I do want to state that I never fully read the play but know the main plot points. That being said this is very close in terms of the main points I am familiar with. I think the main difference here is that Lady Macbeth in the play seems to be villainized but here you see more of her motivations in the actions she takes. She is a more three dimensional character here. This is quite intense at times and there are brutal descriptions of violence on page, so make sure you are prepared for that. Overall I thought the descriptions the author uses in this book really lend themselves to having the setting be a big part of the story, almost as its own character. I thought this was a well done story, and I would recommend it if you like gothic stories. I also did like a theme of female power that weaved its way throughout this story

I wanted to love this - Ava Reid meets my favorite Shakespeare play? Yes, please.
Something about it didn't land. I was excited for a deep, dark character study of one of the most devious and intriguing female villains of classic literature. This Lady Macbeth read more like a heroine of your run of the mill romantasy. I think I understand what Reid was trying to do with the source material and the history of Scotland, plus a sprinkle of fantasy. It just didn't quite get the job done for me.
That being said I read all 400 pages in about 2 sitting of a couple hours, so it was still incredibly readable!

I gotta admit: I am not a Shakespeare fan (though there are notable exceptions). I requested this galley partly because of the striking cover, and partly because as a teen i went down a rabbit hole about the historical Macbeth. I really had no idea what to expect from this book, and was surprised in so many exciting ways!

There were some aspects here that felt to me like what I might find in any good historical retelling done from a woman's point of view: the constraints of Roscille's life, traded away as a bride to the Thane of Glammis; the expectations of a woman at the time and her fear and resistance and pain; the cleverness she has developed and the ways she conceals it from the men around her. And layered on top of that almost gothic horror sense of dread was a very exciting coating of witchy magic rumors that all prove to be true, like the assertion that Roscille can control men by looking them in the eye and so must wear a veil, or the story about a cursed king's son who becomes a monster when he sleeps, or—of course—the three witches who prophesy Macbeth's rise to the throne.

It's a fast, compelling read as Roscille's plans get more complex and harder to conceal, and her will to not just survive but have what she desires most leads her down dark and bloody paths. Fantastic!

4.5 ✨

Beautiful writing and a beautiful story. I can’t put into words how Lady Macbeth’s story moved me and how much I loved the themes presented in this book. Ava Reid has become one of my favorite authors!

I struggled a bit about how to rate this book. I think I’ll settle for an overall 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 stars.
While Macbeth was not my favorite Shakespeare play, I am very familiar with the source material that inspired Reid to write this book. I liked the fact that Lady Macbeth’s victim status and vulnerability were fully explored in this book, but I was disappointed to see her agency taken away so completely at times. Reid is a master at portraying broken women and making them overcome their conditions, but this went in a different direction than what I was expecting. I was also a bit sad that her madness was not developed more than it was.
I enjoyed the book a lot more when I stopped seeing it as a retelling, actually. And to be fair, nothing could have taken away my owe of Reid’s way with words, her phrasing often making me forget the criticisms I had. As in every other book she’s written, I highlighted many sentences or paragraphs which echoed on a very deep level within me.
So although I did not love this book as much as I had her previous ones, I feel like this was still such an incredible piece of writing that I cannot be completely disappointed as I know some of my friends have been.

DNF 50%

I have enjoyed two of the authors books before and I usually really like the writing, the vibes (the atmosphere specifically is what i enjoy the most) and some characters. However, this one failed to captivate me. I guess in the other books the plot subject interested me and in this book it didnt, even though i thought i would (i read macbeth and enjoyed). Maybe the focus on one character did influence it too. I still will keep an eye on anything the author writes next!

I automatically add anything Ava Reid writes to my collection. This was another win and I will definitely be adding this to recommendation lists and book talks.

I will preface this by saying outside of Romeo and Juliet I have never read Shakespeare, I know absolutely nothing about the story of MacBeth. That being said I over all enjoyed this book. I thought the writing was beautiful at moments and very lush. I liked the story line I thought that for what I thought the time period was supposed to be that the prejudices and misogyny were appropriate. That being said the I found the main character to only have a few parts where I found her likable. All of the men in this story sucked including the one that was supposed to be likable. I think that the constant Scotts/men hating rhetoric really could have been toned down. I dunno i'm really on the fence with this one.