Julia's Reviews > The Song of Achilles

When I finished the book it was a four, maybe a four point five stars read for me. I loved it, enjoyed every second reading it, but it somehow was not five stars for me.

The whole book it felt like the author was building up the reader’s emotions to crush them in the end.
And as it sure did this to many, as the end of the story is clear, I did not end up crying. And maybe that is a bit while it first felt like the book was not delivering what it promised to me.
Now I think it might was more my fault than the book’s. And I probably end up crying the time I’m rereading it, which i plan to do for sure.

As this is a much celebrated work, probably all that could be said about it has been said and probably better than I ever could.
I’ll just say now: It is a great love story, full of emotions and beautifully written. And as you see the two main characters grow old, you care deeply for them.
Don’t go into reading expecting a lot of details about the Trojan War, as the book -while staying pretty close to the Iliad as far as I can tell- focused pretty much only on Achilles and Patroclus. But that it does so well, that it should not bother anyone. I think it is a great read whether you are a Greek mythology geek or not at all!

In the end I found myself listening to many “Song of Achilles” Playlists on Spotify, even making my own eventually, reading and laughing about loads of tumblr posts and memes about the book on Pinterest and generally obsessing about Greek myths again (as I did in my Percy Jackson Times).

With that much impact on me, it just feels not right to leave my Goodreads rating like that and I just have to bump it up one more stars. So here you go, a five star rating from me :)
And now excuse my while I listen to another episode of “Let’s talk about myths, Baby!” by Liv Albert or read a bit in Steven Fry’s “Mythos” as I just can’t get enough now.