📆 Publication Date: 26th February 2026
⭐️5/5 stars
📖 Length: 352 pages
📱 Format: ePUB
⏳ Read Time: 5 days
Synopsis
YOU KNOW MY NAME.
BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW ME.
Your historians call me seductress, but I was ever in love’s thrall.
Your playwrights speak of witchcraft, but my talents came from the gods themselves.
Your poets sing of my bloodlust, but I was always protecting my children.
How wilfully they refuse to concede that a woman could be powerful, strategic, divinely blessed to rule.
Death will silence me no longer.
This is not the story of how I died. But how I lived.
What I thought
Let me just start by saying that I loved this.
Loved it.
Truly.
Being really into mythology and historical retellings lately, when I saw Cleopatra go up on NetGalley I knew I had to have it. I’m just disappointed in myself for letting it sit on my ARC TBR for so long, gathering dust. Because I can hand on heart say that this book was beyond my expectations, and then some.
So let’s start by clarifying that this isn’t a factual novel, although it’s clearly heavily researched from what we know of Cleopatra. This is simply her story in her own voice. Cleopatra comes across as a ruler, a mother, a strategist, and a woman reclaiming her legacy. Not the stereotype history has so often reduced her to. That alone made the story feel powerful, emotional, and far more personal than the versions we usually see.
The story’s timeline was handled in an interesting way, and it didn’t unfold how I expected, which kept me hooked from start to finish. The ending does rush through quite a few years in a short space of time and I definitely think a couple of extra chapters would have made it flow better, but it didn’t impact my overall love for the story.
And the editions that I’ve seen? Absolutely stunning. The artwork is gorgeous, and I will definitely be picking up a special edition for my shelves.
Overall
Overall, this version of Cleopatra had me in a chokehold, and I’m just sad I didn’t experience it sooner.
If you’re loving female-centred historical or mythological retellings like I am, I can’t recommend this enough.
This is released 26th February, but you can pre-order this below
On Amazon – here
Bookshop.Org – here
Thanks to NetGalley, Harper Collins UK, and the author for this ARC in return for an honest review.
Until next time… 🖤
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