Cruel Seduction (Dark Olympus #5) by Katee Robert

 
Cruel Seduction by Katee Robert
My Rating: ★★★

Aphrodite is devoted to keeping Olympus safe no matter what the cost. When a new Hephaestus comes into the picture at the cost of her cousin’s life, she willingly throws her long-time relationship with Adonis out the window. Marrying for love was never on the horizon, but marrying the enemy by choice turns out to be harder than Aphrodite imagined it would be. As she clashes with her new husband, it turns out he’s not as bad as she thought. In fact… she might be developing feelings. Is she destined for a broken heart, or is this unusual arrangement destined to be?

I was extremely excited to finally start this book. A messy marriage between Aphrodite and Hephaestus after the events of the last book? Sign me up! Unfortunately, I didn’t think it was messy at all. If anything, it was a pretty good fictional interpretation of four people accidentally stumbling into a poly relationship with one other. Sure, it could’ve been intentional as well as happening in better circumstances, but it turned out to be a healthy relationship between the four from the start. Plus, the political plots were what I expected after the last book. Either I have high expectations for mess and don’t realize it or it wasn’t messy at all.

Either way, it was a pretty good book. We follow Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Adonis, and Pandora through their rotating perspectives. I actually favored Adonis and Pandora’s chapters over Hephaestus and Aphrodite, but their chapters weren’t bad. It just really bugged me that they constantly referred to each other as “husband” and “wife” majority of the time rather than using names or leaving a name out all together. It was getting real old after a while and I wished they would at least give each other nicknames or something instead of being like, “Over there, husband.” Otherwise, I favored Adonis and Pandora because they’re the softer and more level headed characters. Aphrodite and Hephaestus are pretty stubborn and bold characters who are pretty much in your face all the time, which is always fun to read, but it just made it easy to have a preference with the four perspectives.

That said, this turned out to not be among my favorite books. I just think that the books following more than two characters on the regular just aren’t that strong enough compared to the others. I do like that there was a lot of improvement since the throuple and that each of the four characters have a really distinct voice. The poly relationship is one of my favorite aspects of the book and I hope to see more poly relationships appear in Katee’s books. I just kept getting taken out of the story every Aphrodite and Hephaestus called the other husband or wife. I also was expecting the book to be pretty messy and didn’t think it was at all. Otherwise, it’s a pretty good book and I’m really interested in seeing where the series goes from here.