30 January 2026

Circe has always been a footnote in someone else's epic — the witch who turns men to pigs in one chapter of the Odyssey — and Miller's whole project here is giving her the several-hundred-page life she was always owed. What surprised me most is how much of this book is about loneliness and self-invention rather than magic or myth spectacle; Circe spends centuries in exile essentially building a self out of that exile, and the process feels startlingly modern despite the ancient setting around it. This is one of the best books to read if you love mythology retellings but want one that centers a woman's interiority instead of just flipping the perspective as a gimmick — Miller takes the emotional stakes completely seriously throughout. Read it when you want something immersive and lush but not heavy in the way literary fiction sometimes is; there's real warmth and even wit in Circe's voice, alongside the isolation she carries. It works beautifully as a beach or travel read, since the prose moves fast despite its depth, but it also holds up to slower, more attentive reading if that's your mood instead. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a strong, complicated female protagonist who earns her power gradually rather than having it handed to her, and to any reader who assumed they were done with Greek mythology and needs one book to prove otherwise. It's transportive, satisfying, and ends in a place that feels completely, hard-earned.