Book Review: Circe

Title: Circe
Author: Madeline Miller
Genre: Fantasy, Mythology retell
Book Length: 433 Pages (print)
Book Type: ebook; paperback
Year Published: April 10, 2018

Date Started: February 7, 2024
Date finished: February 11, 2024

This book was recommended to me by my daughter. She loved it and insisted that I read it. I found the story interesting. I knew nothing about Circe until I read this book. It prompted me to do research on this mythology character.

Circe in mythology is supposed to be evil and seduce men. She’s also known as a witch because she was good at casting spells and using herbs and plants to create her spells. Going into this story not knowing anything about her, I felt like the author was torn between making her mostly good and somewhat evil, or just good but trying to keep to the true Circe. I felt confused by this pull so it was hard to get a good feel for this Circe.

The story was from Circe’s first point-of-view which I found wasn’t a good choice (I would have preferred third limited). However, the overall story was actually good. Circe wasn’t very emotional and basically watched as things happened around her, throwing her spells here and there to have some control of her own life. She wasn’t loved and she retaliated. She was jealous and retaliated. Her retaliation was vicious and cruel, yet we are supposed to sympathize with her because nobody loved her. She was a complete victim, yet in the end, I felt like she was one lucky goddess-witch who played with people’s minds and destroyed anyone who came her way, and still came out on top. The story was well put together. Humans are not supposed to be friends with the Greek gods, and it showed.

Who should read this book: Anyone curious about the Greek goddess/witch Circe.