I was really drawn in by this book’s premise but I ultimately feel disappointed about it as a whole. I enjoyed the dual narrative timelines as a method of storytelling and appreciated the parallels drawn between Greek mythology and Christianity, but I felt like it failed to really flesh out either side of this story. Instead of having a good part of the book dedicated to Thelia and her sisters’ relationship prior to their exile, their struggles on the island, and the depth of their betrayal/how exile felt for all three, we are only provided the barest of glimpses into this relationship that Thelia claims is what drives her to go on this mad search for men to sacrifice. Similarly, we are encouraged to root for these colonizer women who are painted as women without agency due to their circumstances, but there are so many of them who are only afforded the barest of details in favor of more detailed descriptions of the men. Finally, the fact that this story was set in 1600s Roanoke but there was almost zero mention of the indigenous folks living in that area except for references to a massacre and the captured women who washed ashore her island really rubbed me the wrong way.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for this free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What happens when you mix a mystery from America’s history with mythology, feminist rage, and romance? This book, which presents an interesting case: what if sirens from Greco-Roman mythology were responsible for the disappearance of the inhabitants of the lost colony of Roanoke?

Our main character is Thelia, one of three sisters who act as handmaidens to Proserpina (Persephone). They were transformed into winged creatures to assist in the search for their charge when she was abducted by Dis (Hades). When they fail to find and rescue the goddess, they are imprisoned on an island as punishment. There, they lure sailors with their singing. After hundreds of years, Thelia learns there may be a way to lift the curse she and her sisters are under, but it requires the sacrifice of many treacherous men…something the English colony of Roanoke in the Americas has more then a few of.

I liked the unique premise of the story and the bits detailing the lives of Thelia and her sister sirens on the island of Scopuli. The prose is pleasing to read. However, I don't much buy or like the romance subplot. It's a little too heavy on the instalove without any elaboration or further build up. I'm also not sold on the more modern slang used for the Puritans in Raleigh. It's not a slam dunk recommendation for me, but I did enjoy it!

An awesome Greek retelling. This author is a great new voice in Historical retellings. A blast of a book!

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the arc of this book. All opinions are my own.

I really loved this one! I am not the best at writing reviews sometimes, but sometimes books take you by surprise and this one did just that. I got invested a few chapters in and couldn't put it done. It was so good! I highly recommend this one.

It kept me on the edge all the time. The story revolves around a mystery tied to a series of solving floral symbols. Has a steady pacing. The characters were well developed

Reading the synopsis of the books, it should be everything I like: sapphic yearning, female rage, female friendship, and raging against the patriarchy. While at times I enjoyed it, the story didn’t quite hit for me. The pacing was slow, especially with the dual timelines, but it does pick up at the 80% mark. The sapphic love story is a slow burn as the characters are romantically intertwined with other characters. With that being said, I think the book is well written, and it will certainly make you feel female rage.

Lastly, I would encourage folks to check the trigger warnings as there are a number of warnings associated with this book.

Thank you to Shannon Ives, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Dell, and to NetGalley for providing an ebook in exchange for an honest review.

3 Stars?
The premise was undeniably fascinating but somewhere it got lost. If you're going to depict colonial US, please show the indigenous community too. That said, the writing was pretty good and we def got an unhinged sapphic story.

DNF at 30%. Thank you for the ARC but this is just not grabbing and hooking me. The writing is a little convoluted and it’s annoying how often Thelia mentions Proserpina in a sexual context when I’m only 30% through. It’s clear that they were lovers from the beginning, it doesn’t need to continue to be an overt point.

Discover: This sapphic retelling of the mythological sirens, which unfolds in dual timelines between the lost colony of Roanoke and the legendary island of Scopuli, emphasizes the power of women.

Review continues on Shelf Awareness...

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Those Fatal Flowers follows Thelia, handmaiden to the goddess of spring, who infiltrates the Roanoke colony and enacts a plot to save her sisters and get revenge.

By and large my biggest problem with this book is its somewhat covert conceit that the suffering of white women in a patriarchal society is the same as the suffering of indigenous women existing in that same patriarchal society, plus racism. While I do think that the blending of Greco-Roman mythology with the historical "mystery" of Roanoke is certainly an interesting premise with oodles of potential, divorcing that historical moment generally from the Indigenous peoples who were present at the time -- except to loosely liken their plight to being a woman -- felt like a major misstep. Books that interrogate oppression are always vital and always important, but a book that attempts to interrogate one kind of oppression without acknowledging the nuance or attempting to tackle the intersectionality involved in that specific oppressive dynamic, will never truly stick the landing. While the lived experiences of indigenous women may not be the author's story to tell, her white female characters are still complicit oppressors in their own right, and reckoning with that would have enriched the story and characters and would have made this paragraph a heck of a lot shorter.

I did think Thelia was an interesting character, and the sapphic romance at the center of this book was decently compelling. There was a lot that the characters lived through that was difficult to read, especially as regards the abuses that these characters suffer at the hands of their patriarchal oppressors. I thought the pacing was slow in the beginning, but the payoff in the final quarter of the book was well worth it. I also loved the way the timelines intertwined over the course of the book; it was a narrative choice that kept me on the edge of my seat.

This book is crazy in some of the best ways, and certainly bursting at the seams with cathartic feminine rage; it just didn't quite feel responsible enough towards its setting to fully stick the landing for me.

This was an interesting read. It had Greek mythology, colonial America and sirens. It was an interesting premise and had a very unique storyline. I’m just not so sure that I loved it too much. It had a lot of action, mystery and violence and was intriguing at times.

Dear Those Fatal Flowers,
Your first few chapters were rough for me. I struggled to get into either of the time lines, and I didn't really like Thelia. I found her sad, and a bit pathetic at the beginning. Thankfully I didn't quit on you, and ended up digging into both story lines. Getting to know the other sirens personalities was interesting, and the mystery of the Roanoke colony has always been fascinating to me. At times, you were brutal with your violence and pain, and almost every chapter vibrated with justifiable rage. It was hard to stay in that space of such anger, but I did enjoy your overall story, and Thelia grew on me.

3.5 stars rounded up. This was a well-written sapphic historical fiction book. The premise was really interesting and the writing style was lovely at times. I liked the characters and the main relationship. I never really reached a point where I felt connected to the story though. It had kind of a floaty feel for me, which was nice in a way. I think the dual timelines occasionally made it hard for me to follow the story.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All comments are my own.

Not sure why anyone thought it was a good idea to write a story about the vanishing of the Roanoke Colony and not have a single Indigenous character. Especially when this story is taking inspiration from real-life, catastrophic events. While I am a lover of both mythology and history, this truly missed the mark. The language was far too modern, lack of indigenous characters, dense exposition, and a little too much gore than necessary. I was so disappointed, honestly, was a very interesting crossover but the execution missed the mark for me.

Gothic storytelling? Check. Haunting feminist themes? Check. A slow-burning mythological fever dream? Check.

Thanks for the ARC NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, and of course Shannon Ives.

This is an ambitious and unique blend of Greco-Roman mythology and the mystery of the Roanoke colony, weaving together themes of feminine rage, monstrous transformation, and sapphic yearning. Thelia, a former handmaiden of Proserpina turned siren, is a deeply compelling protagonist—driven by guilt, vengeance, and the desperate hope of reclaiming the life she lost. The alternating timelines between the cursed island of Scopuli and the doomed Roanoke settlement add to the novel’s haunting atmosphere, creating a story that is both mythic and historical.

The premise is undeniably fascinating, and the execution mostly delivers. I loved how the novel leans into its themes, particularly in the context of women’s agency. The prose is beautiful and the story balances emotional moments with the raw, unflinching violence and despair of Thelia’s past. The sapphic romance was wonderful—aching, tragic, and threaded with the weight of Thelia’s past mistakes. The novel doesn’t shy away from violence, but it also doesn’t revel in it, which I appreciated. The focus remains on the emotional depth of the characters rather than the trauma they endure.

That said, there’s an unavoidable issue: the glaring absence of Indigenous perspectives. Roanoke’s history is deeply entwined with Indigenous narratives, and the novel largely sidesteps this, leaving a noticeable gap in the story. It’s the kind of omission that feels impossible to ignore, especially given the book’s otherwise thoughtful engagement with historical and mythological themes. The inclusion of Indigenous sensitivity readers would have been crucial here—there was a way to tell this story from the author's perspective while acknowledging the full historical weight of colonization, and that opportunity was missed.

Those Fatal Flowers remains a well-written and gripping read. It’s lush, immersive, and filled with the kind of dark, vengeful energy that makes for a cathartic reading experience. But its failure to fully engage with the Indigenous history of Roanoke keeps it from reaching its full potential.

Thanks so much to the publisher and Netgalley for the complimentary copy. This review is voluntary and all opinions are my own.

I’m not really familiar with this part of Greek mythology, so I went into reading this with an open mind and a curiosity about how the author was going to incorporate Thelia into the colony of Roanoke. However, these kind of retellings are sometimes hit or miss for me, and while this wasn’t a bad read, there were some things about it that lowered my rating.

Starting with the things I liked, I was really interested in what life was like at the Roanoke colony and how a being from Greek mythology would integrate. As expected, Thelia struggled to fit in to society on Roanoke. She wasn’t at all familiar with the Christian religion, and it didn’t help that she came from a society that was accepting of LGBTQ+ people into one where women are repressed and queer people were oppressed. I thought that Ives did a great job of expressing Thelia’s thoughts as she gradually learns about this society where she ended up.

I wasn’t a fan of the dual timelines. I was much more invested in the Roanoke timeline as opposed to the flashbacks to her loss of Proserpina and life on Scopuli. I was also confused about what the sisters were cursed to be: at times, they were made out to be sirens, who could lure sailors with their call; but at others, they sounded like the harpies of mythology. Besides being unsure of the creatures the sisters were, it felt like a lot of the flashback to Scopuli chapters could have been omitted since they didn’t do much to further the plot of the story aside from a few important reveals.

Granted, I’m not overly familiar with Colonial America, but the story does give a warning about the effects of colonialism, so I already knew there would be some element of structural racism or violence. The characters in both timelines lived on an island, but that’s really all they have in common for the most part. In the Scopuli narrative, readers are given insight into the events that led to Thelia and her sisters taking control over their femininity and their power. There is a marked difference between their empowerment and the disempowerment of women of Roanoke under British rule.

I didn’t feel a strong connection to the bond between Thelia and Cora. It felt too much like insta-love, although I guess that’s how I might feel too if I saw someone that looked exactly like my lost love. Maybe it’s because she came from a period of time where the gods performed miracles, but the queer romance, while appreciated, didn’t quite come across as strongly to my emotions.

In the beginning of the book, the author does give trigger warnings. But one area that wasn’t listed, and wasn’t addressed in the book at all is the Roanoke colony being part of the genocide of Indigenous peoples. The violence and massacre of the Indigenous peoples surrounding the colony felt very insensitive to me. Native people weren’t ever depicted as anything other than violent savages in need of the civilizing effects of colonization, while the “civilized” members of Roanoke colony had no problem behaving in a savage manner. I would have liked to see at least one positive depiction of an Indigenous person in the story.

Overall, I had high hopes for this one, and it didn’t quite meet those expectations. It wound up being an okay read, but I really wasn’t overly invested in any aspect of the story. I was especially intrigued by the choice to use the Roman names for gods instead of the more familiar Persephone/Demeter story. I also found myself wondering why Demeter left her daughter in the charge of three young girls instead of someone who could actually protect her, but I did like the idea that Proserpina had chosen to stay in the Underworld, taking charge of her own fate. You might find this one a good fit if you: like historical fiction, are curious about the colony of Roanoke, love mythology retellings, and are all for a sapphic romance.

Those Fatal Flowers is definitely an intense and suspenseful read that kept me on edge, but I’ll admit—this isn’t usually my type of book. I’m not someone who typically enjoys dark themes in my romance novels, and as an empath, I’m not big on thrillers or anything too intense, so parts of this book felt a little overwhelming for me. The tension, the secrets, and the dangerous attraction between the characters were gripping, but at times, it felt like it crossed a line into territory I’m not comfortable with in romance.

That said, I can absolutely see why fans of dark romance or romantic thrillers would love this book. The plot is well-written, with plenty of twists and turns, and the chemistry between the leads is juicy. Talon is definitely a compelling, complex character that many readers will find intriguing, especially those who enjoy a little danger mixed into their love stories.

Overall, while it was a bit too intense for my taste, I can see why it’d resonate with those who enjoy a more dramatic, suspense-filled romance. If you like dark, edgy reads, Those Fatal Flowers might be just what you’re looking for!

3.75 ⭐️

This was pretty unhinged at some points. Sometimes I liked that. Overall, I think this was a solid read, though I would’ve liked it to actually be tied to Roanoke in a more significant way. As it is, the “now” portions could basically be any colony that Thelia stumbles upon. There was nothing that really screamed lost colony of Roanoke, specifically, to me.

There are some pretty gruesome bits to this book, like somewhat graphic descriptions of butchering humans and whatnot, though it didn’t bother me too much personally. I did have a spot that did end up turning my stomach a little and I had to step away from it for the night before continuing to read, but I also do think it was specifically written to invoke that reaction, so…mission success I suppose.

Overall, it was a pretty enjoyable read. If you like sapphic, feminine rage mixed with Greco-Roman mythology, check out Those Fatal Flowers.

Thank you Random House for the early review copy of Those Fatal Flowers. All opinions are my own!

I was very excited going into this story - I love greek mythology and growing up in one of the original 13 colonies, I have always had a fascination for the settler's lives. However, this story was so confusing I could not wrap my head around what was happening.