Summary
He was my enemy. My lover. My husband. And the one man I swore by all Olympus I would destroy.
Aphrodite has never flinched at getting her perfectly manicured hands dirty, and she’s not about to start now—even if that means marrying Olympus’s enemy number one, the new Hephaestus. She has a plan to keep her deadly new husband off-balance, seducing the one person he seems to care about most in this world: Pandora, a woman as beautiful as she is sweet.
Two can play the seduction game, however, and Hephaestus is all too happy to put his new wife in her place. Her ex, Adonis, seems like he’ll do the trick. It doesn’t hurt that he’s gorgeous in the way of fallen angels, either.
The only problem with using seduction as a weapon? Hearts are all too quick to get involved. With Hephaestus and Aphrodite trading venomous strikes that feel a whole lot like foreplay, lines become blurred and emotions entangled. But a broken heart may be the least of their worries. With unrest in Olympus reaching new heights, these bedroom games may have deadly consequences for themselves, their city, and everyone they’ve come to love.
My Thoughts
Cruel Seduction is book 5 in the Dark Olympus series by Katee Robert. It follows Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Adonis, and Pandora in their convoluted journey towards each other. I enjoyed Cruel Seduction and thought the mixed POV’s throughout the book was really well done. The transitions were always smooth, and I LOVED the perspective of different people throughout a situation.
A couple of my favorite things:
- The enemies to lovers thing Aphrodite (Eris) and Hephaestus (Theseus) had going on. Sexy and rough and then vulnerable!
- The spice scene with Aphrodite, Hephaestus, and Adonis.. S P I C Y ! ! ! !
- The polyamory. Finally a greek mythology retelling series has non-monogamy. It has been scattered through the series already, but in Cruel Seduction it becomes much more apparent and goes into detail on what it is and why the characters are defining themselves as poly. I really loved this, and it makes me wish our world was more accepting of all different kinds of sexuality.
- Pandora. I was convinced in the last book that Pandora was somehow going to be evil, but she is actually a gorgeous angel desiring to take care of Aphrodite (Eris) and help her take care of herself.
- The toying with Zeus (Perseus) going off the rails and potentially leading the city with fear like his father. If he gets a book in the future, I can’t wait!! I loved his and Hera’s short story about the wedding, and would love more about them.
A couple of things I didn’t love:
- The stakes never really felt very high to me, so I wasn’t as invested. We should have gotten more of the assassination attempts, but they were not described in much detail.
- Hephaestus and Adonis… IDK, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
- The ending… everyone just falls in love after 5 days and moves in together to be a cohesive poly quad? Now I know this is fiction, but that was a bit of a stretch. You can’t make me believe you can go from absolutely hating someone and wanting to kill them, to having them move in and potentially loving them. None of them spent very much time together, not a lot happened, and all the sudden they are ready to commit to this poly quad?
- Aphrodite – she wasn’t a bad character, and when she started to show a bit of vulnerability I liked her more, but the first half of the book I didn’t really like her whole insult/bitchy facade.
It was a good book, but I think it could have been better. I liked a lot of things about it, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the other ones in the series. 1-4 and 6 were all much better than this one in my opinion.
Overall, I enjoyed Cruel Seduction by Katee Robert and if you are reading the series through definitely give it a shot! It was entertaining, spicy, and full of hate and anger turned lust and maybe love?
Read-worthy.
See what books I think are worthy of a re-read here.
