Title: Cruel Seduction (Dark Olympus #5)

Author: Katee Robert

Publisher: Sourcebooks 2023

Genre: Romance

Pages: 384

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Unread Shelf; Romanceopoly - City Lane (Fantasy that doesn’t involve magic)

Spice Rating: 8

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 wicked 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 biggest complaint about this book… it needed to be longer. We get a great setup with Eris’s forced marriage to Theseus alongside the complications of Pandora and Adonis. We get the larger storyline of the barriers failing and new player trying to take over Olympus. I was all for slowly untangling this mess and watching characters find themselves and each other. And they do, but the ending really seemed rushed to me. I wanted to sit with some of the revelations a bit longer. I wanted to see how the polyam groupings worked in everyday life, not just in the bedroom. I wanted more from these characters. The review is pretty negative, but I did really enjoy reading the book. I loved getting more insight into some of the characters that we’ve briefly encountered. Theseus was my favorite. I loved learning his story and seeing him finally become his own person and find love, in very unexpected places. I cannot wait until the next Dark Olympus book in January.

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