Sweetbitter Song Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Q: Is Sweetbitter Song a standalone?

Yes, with no sequel. Rosie Hewlett's other retellings, Medusa and Medea (The Witch of Colchis in the US), are separate books.

Updated on October 5, 2026

Verdict: A lyrical, devastating sapphic retelling of the Odyssey that gives Melantho and Penelope the love story Homer never did, held back by its length and by a princess-and-slave power imbalance that it never fully works through.

Best for: Readers who loved The Song of Achilles and want the same slow, aching devotion between two women, and who can carry heavy material (slavery, sexual violence, war) across nearly 500 pages for a hard-won ending.

Heat level: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5 — no romance.io steam band yet; readers describe longing and restraint rather than explicit scenes)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — a 4.26 Goodreads average across 3,948 ratings, with a small but pointed minority report on pacing and power)

Tropes: Mythology retelling, forbidden love, slow burn, class divide, childhood connection rekindled, wartime separation, found family among women, years-long pining, marriage in the way, rewritten fate.

Sweetbitter Song by Rosie Hewlett is a standalone historical sapphic novel and Greek mythology retelling, published by Sourcebooks Landmark in the US and Bantam in the UK in March 2026, set in Bronze Age Sparta and Ithaca across the decades of the Trojan War — and built around an enslaved girl named Melantho, who is meant to be one of Penelope’s maids, and Penelope herself, the queen who is meant to wait faithfully for Odysseus.

It holds a 4.26 average across 3,948 Goodreads ratings, a 4.28 on StoryGraph with only 3% of readers not finishing, and a set of author blurbs that reach straight for The Song of Achilles. The praise is real and it is loud. So is a smaller group of readers who think the book never reckons with what it means to romanticise a slave and her mistress. Both are worth knowing before you start.

What Is Sweetbitter Song About?

Sweetbitter Song sits where literary fiction and romance overlap: the love story is the spine of the book, but it is shelved as historical fiction and reads like the feminist Greek-myth retellings that followed Madeline Miller, Jennifer Saint and Natalie Haynes. That means a long time span, a world in which women are property to varying degrees, and an ending you cannot assume will be kind.

Melantho is the centre of it. In Homer she is a disloyal maid who barely speaks and is punished when Odysseus comes home. Hewlett gives her a childhood, a temper and an interior life, and the story is told mainly through her. Penelope is the princess she meets as a girl in Sparta and serves years later on Ithaca — a woman with more power than Melantho and far less freedom than the word “queen” implies. The book keeps returning to that gap between them, and how much a love story can bridge it is the question it never quite answers.

What Makes This Sapphic Mythology Retelling Work

The prose: The most consistent praise in the reviews. “Lyrical” and “stunning” come up again and again, and one blog reviewer says she highlighted passage after passage.
Melantho herself: Early readers praise her as raw, determined and finally unsilenced. Taking a nearly voiceless figure from Homer and making her the narrator is the book’s best idea, and readers agree it pays off.
The yearning: This is a slow burn measured in years. Readers name the tension, the pining and the long build as the reason they kept going.
The women of Ithaca: With the men gone to Troy, the maids and their mistress build something like a society of their own, and the bonds between the handmaidens draw nearly as much praise as the romance.
A rewritten ending: Without spoilers, Hewlett does not simply replay Homer’s fate for Melantho. Reviewers describe the ending as a real surprise, and it is the reason “heartbreaking but hopeful” is the most common way people sum it up.

Book Synopsis

Melantho is a child and a slave when she first sees Penelope, a Spartan princess with a sharp mind and a strange, steady attention. Something passes between them that neither has a word for. Then Penelope is married off, and the meeting becomes a memory Melantho has learned not to trust.

Years later, Melantho arrives on Ithaca to serve the new queen. She has spent those years learning what happens to slaves who want things, and she has decided that whatever she once felt for Penelope stays buried. Penelope, it turns out, has not forgotten either. In a household built on rank, the two of them circle each other with a caution that keeps breaking down.

Then the ships leave for Troy. With the king and nearly every man of fighting age gone, the women of Ithaca are left to run the island themselves, and in the gap the war leaves behind, something like a life together becomes possible for Melantho and Penelope. It cannot last as it is. Everyone knows how the Odyssey ends for the maids who stayed. The question the novel keeps underneath every scene is what the two women are willing to risk, and to give up, when the king finally comes home.

My Review

The idea here is the right one, and Hewlett executes it with real conviction. Melantho is one of the most casually discarded figures in Homer, and turning her into a narrator with wit, anger and appetite is exactly what a retelling should do. She is at her best when difficult: suspicious of tenderness, slow to believe a princess can love her without owning her. That wariness makes the romance feel earned rather than handed over.

The second strength is the sentence-level writing, which is what most readers come away talking about. It is lush without being purple. The Ithaca years, when the women hold the island together, are the warmest section of the book, and the friendships among the maids give it a texture that a two-hander romance would lack.

Where it struggles is length, and this is the complaint that recurs most across the critical reviews rather than my own impatience. The book runs to around 500 pages, and several readers say it drags, cycles through the same push-and-pull between the two women more than once, and skips large parts of their years together through time jumps while lingering elsewhere. A smaller cluster says the characters sound like modern women dropped into a period setting.

The bigger argument is about power. This is a romance between an enslaved woman and the woman who effectively owns her, and a number of readers on StoryGraph say the book does not interrogate that imbalance as hard as it should — one calls it a slave-and-master romance, others say the repeated comparison between being a woman and being a slave sits wrong. The book knows the imbalance is there; whether it does enough with it is the honest split.

One expectation to reset: the cover and the comparisons promise a love story, and it is one, but it is not cosy. Several reviewers were not prepared for the sexual violence, which is heaviest near the beginning and end. If “Song of Achilles for women” is what drew you, expect that book’s grief as well as its tenderness. If what worried you was a myth-faithful tragedy, know that the ending is not simply Homer’s.

My honest note: A beautifully written, emotionally serious love story that is about 100 pages too long and less willing to sit in its central discomfort than it should be. If prose and yearning are what you read for, this is one of the year’s best. If a power imbalance like this one will ruin a romance for you, believe that warning.

Element	In Sweetbitter Song
Central relationship	Melantho & Penelope — an enslaved maid and the Spartan princess who becomes queen of Ithaca, forbidden love across decades
Core tropes	Mythology retelling, forbidden love, slow burn, class divide, childhood connection, wartime separation
Setting	Bronze Age Sparta and Ithaca, before, during and after the Trojan War
Heat level	2/5 — low heat by reader consensus; no romance.io steam band yet
Series	Standalone — no sequel; Hewlett’s earlier retellings are Medusa and Medea
Content notes	Slavery, sexual assault including child sexual assault, graphic physical abuse, violence and war, death, childbirth, infidelity, classism, homophobia

How Spicy Is Sweetbitter Song?

Not very — this is a 2/5. romance.io lists the book, but with only 12 ratings it has no steam band yet, so the number comes from the reader reviews, which make the case by what they leave out: across the blog, StoryGraph and early-reader reviews I read, almost nobody discusses sex scenes at all. What readers describe is longing, touch, and the weight of years — the heat is in the restraint, which suits a book that is literary fiction first.

The thing worth flagging in advance is not the intimacy but the sexual violence, which several reviewers say is more graphic than they expected, especially in the opening chapters and near the end. One reader stopped at about a fifth of the way in because of it. No reviewer I found flags explicit consensual content beyond that. If you want a similar register, Cleopatra and The Once and Future Witches both sit at 2/5 on our scale.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you read for prose and atmosphere first, you want a love story that takes years to arrive and costs something when it does, you enjoy feminist Greek-myth retellings that give a minor woman her own voice, and you would rather be wrecked by a book than comforted by it.

You may want to skip it if: a romance between an enslaved woman and her mistress is a dealbreaker for you, you have little patience for 500 pages of slow build and time jumps, you need period voices that never sound modern, or graphic sexual violence is something you avoid.

In short: gorgeous, aching and morally uneasy, and a lot of book to commit to.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

This is not a quiet indie finding its readers one by one. It is a traditionally published lead title from an author whose last book, Medea (published in the US as The Witch of Colchis), debuted at number one on the Sunday Times hardback list and won an Alex Award. The marketing leans on blurbs from Jennifer Saint, Elodie Harper and Kim Curran, two of them comparing it to The Song of Achilles, plus two Goodreads giveaways. The result: 3,948 Goodreads ratings at 4.26, and a StoryGraph 4.28 with a 3% did-not-finish rate, which is low for a book this long and this grim. Trade coverage is thinner than the profile suggests — the Washington Independent Review of Books reviewed it, as did the Lesbrary, but I could not find Kirkus or Publishers Weekly reviews. Web searches turn up no Reddit discussion, and beyond Hewlett’s own TikTok account I could not find a BookTok moment attached to the title. The audiobook, narrated by Lizzie Wofford and running 17 hours 47 minutes, came out alongside the US edition on March 17, 2026, and listeners single out the narration.

Prefer audio? Listen to Sweetbitter Song on Libro.fm, narrated by Lizzie Wofford — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The writing, first and by a distance — “lyrical” is the recurring word, and one blogger calls it as good as The Song of Achilles. Then the emotional impact: “devastatingly beautiful” and “heartbreakingly beautiful” both turn up in five-star reviews, and at least one reader says it left her sobbing. Melantho’s voice is the third theme; early readers praise the decision to tell Penelope’s story through a maid. The friendships among the women of Ithaca draw specific praise, and at least one reviewer singles out a darker, more convincing Odysseus. The Washington Independent reviewer calls the ending a surprise that breaks from the classical sources.

What readers argue about and complain about: Length, above everything. Several reviewers say it dragged, repeated the same cycle between the leads, or was emotionally draining enough that they struggled to keep going. The second theme is the power imbalance — readers on StoryGraph question a romance between a slave and the woman she serves, and object to the book’s repeated equation of womanhood with slavery. Third, a smaller group finds the characters too modern and the gender split too tidy, clever women against foolish men. The Washington Independent review adds that the supporting cast stays thin and the final chapters are weaker than what comes before. Then there is the genuine split over the ending: readers call it bittersweet more than anything, a few call it tragic and a few call it happy, and at least one five-star reviewer still wished it were happier. The word “bittersweet” is doing honest work in the title.

The standalone question worth asking first: it stands alone. There is no sequel and nothing is left hanging; the story covers Melantho and Penelope from childhood to the far side of Odysseus’s return. If it works for you, the next place to go is Hewlett’s own backlist. Medea / The Witch of Colchis is her best-known book and the one with the awards, and Medusa, her self-published debut, won the International Rubery Book Award before being reissued in hardback in 2025. Neither is a sapphic love story, so go for the retelling style, not the romance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Sweetbitter Song have a happy ending?

Not a simple one. The ending departs from Homer’s fate for Melantho, and readers most often call it bittersweet; a few call it tragic and a few call it happy. Expect heavy losses on the way there.

Is Sweetbitter Song a romance or historical fiction?

Both, but it is shelved as historical fiction. The love story between Melantho and Penelope drives the book, yet it covers decades and reads like a literary Greek-myth retelling rather than a genre romance.

How spicy is Sweetbitter Song?

A 2/5. Reviewers barely mention sex scenes; the intensity is in the longing. The content to prepare for is the sexual violence, which several readers found graphic.

Is Sweetbitter Song like The Song of Achilles?

That is the comparison its publishers lead with, and many readers agree: a lyrical, years-long love story told from inside a Greek epic.

Is Sweetbitter Song a standalone?

Yes, with no sequel. Rosie Hewlett’s other retellings, Medusa and Medea (The Witch of Colchis in the US), are separate books.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes. Lizzie Wofford narrates the unabridged audiobook, which runs 17 hours 47 minutes and came out on March 17, 2026. Listeners praise the narration, and it is available on Libro.fm and other audiobook services.

If You Loved Sweetbitter Song, Read These Next

If it was the myth itself that pulled you in, Daughter of the Hunt retells Iphigenia’s story with a goddess at its centre and brings Greek myth into the present day. For another ancient-world woman reclaiming her own story at the same low heat, Cleopatra is the closest match on the site. And if the women-holding-the-world-together half of the book is what stayed with you, The Once and Future Witches is a literary historical novel with a love story in it, built on sisterhood.

For more in this register, browse our best sapphic historical fiction, the historical sapphic romance list, our sapphic yearning picks and the full Book Reviews collection. It also features in the best sapphic romances of 2026 and our sapphic covers that take the story seriously.

The Bottom Line

Sweetbitter Song sets out to do for the Odyssey what The Song of Achilles did for the Iliad, and it gets a long way there. The prose is lovely, Melantho is a real creation, and the slow, decades-long devotion between her and Penelope lands with real force. It is also overlong, uneven in its pacing, and less willing than it should be to stay with what it means for a slave to love the woman who owns her. If what you read for is language and yearning and you can carry dark material, it is one of 2026’s essential sapphic reads. Check Sweetbitter Song on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Sweetbitter Song ranks as a prestige sapphic myth retelling — lyrical and genuinely moving, weighed down by its length and its unexamined power imbalance, and best approached for Melantho’s voice and the yearning rather than as a romance with a guaranteed happy ending.