The End Crowns All Review: Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A sapphic, ace-led retelling of the fall of Troy with two strong heroines and a hopeful rewrite of the myth, held back by a very slow middle and a modern voice that some readers can’t stand.

Best for: Readers who love Greek myth retellings told from the women’s side, want asexual and sapphic rep in YA fantasy, and are happy with a romance that takes hundreds of pages to start.

Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5: young adult, and the romance itself stays chaste)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.9/5: a 3.98 Goodreads average across 3,000 ratings, with pacing the main drag)

Tropes: Myth retelling, rivals to lovers, slow burn, cursed prophet, asexual heroine, dual POV, women against the system, war setting, found sisterhood.

The End Crowns All is Bea Fitzgerald’s second novel and a young adult sapphic retelling of the Trojan War, first published by Penguin in the UK in 2024 and later by Sourcebooks Fire in the US, and it pairs Cassandra, the princess cursed to see the future and never be believed, with Helen of Sparta, the woman her visions say will burn Troy down.

It sits at 3.98 across about 3,000 Goodreads ratings and 4.18 across 1,275 StoryGraph reviews, and Kirkus called it a beautifully hopeful queer story. Fitzgerald’s audience on TikTok and the success of her debut, Girl, Goddess, Queen, mean a lot of readers arrive expecting the same kind of book. Whether they find it is where the reviews split.

What Is The End Crowns All About?

This is mythic fantasy with a war at its back. Troy is under siege, the gods are meddling, and the women of the city have almost no say in what happens to them. That’s the real subject. Cassandra’s curse works as a metaphor for every woman who isn’t believed, and the book says so openly.

Cassandra made a bargain with Apollo and refused him afterward, and her punishment is a gift of prophecy nobody trusts. She’s asexual and knows she’s drawn to women, which she’s never been able to say out loud. Helen arrives in Troy as the face of the war, and she’s far more than the beauty the legends describe: a Spartan who can fight, scheme and survive. The story alternates between the two of them.

What Makes This Sapphic Myth Retelling Work

Helen: Readers love this version of her. She’s Spartan, handy with a sword, and the rightful heir whose claim made Menelaus king, which is a detail several reviewers say other retellings skip.
The ace rep: A string of reviewers say this was their first YA book with an asexual lead, and they want more like it.
The feminism: Female empowerment is the theme readers mention most. One 2-star reader still praised how carefully it handles consent and the right to say no.
Character growth: 92% of StoryGraph reviewers say the characters develop strongly, and readers repeatedly say the two leads grow up a lot over the book.
The hopeful turn: Rather than ending in pure tragedy, it reworks the myth toward hope. Readers who usually prefer sad books still found that satisfying.

Book Synopsis

Cassandra of Troy once asked a god for the power to see the future, and she got it. When she then turned Apollo away, he made sure the gift would ruin her: she sees everything that’s coming, and no one believes a word. She has spent years watching her family dismiss her as a mad girl while the same vision of Troy in flames comes back again and again.

At the center of that vision is Helen. When the Spartan queen arrives in Troy with Paris, everyone else sees a beautiful scandal. Cassandra sees the end of her city. She’s ready to hate Helen on sight, and the feeling seems mutual. But Helen isn’t who the songs say she is. She’s sharp, angry and trapped in a role men chose for her, and she has plans of her own.

As the Greek ships gather and the war settles in, the two of them keep colliding, then start to see each other clearly. Cassandra has always known how this story ends. The question is whether two women nobody listens to can change a fate written by gods and kings, and whether what’s growing between them can survive it.

My Review

The best thing about this book is its two heroines. Fitzgerald takes the most mocked figures of the Trojan story, the madwoman and the face that launched a thousand ships, and gives both of them a brain, a temper and a point of view. Helen in particular is a treat, and readers keep quoting her lines back with delight.

The second strength is how seriously it treats consent. Cassandra’s curse is rooted in a god who wouldn’t take no for an answer, and the book never softens that. Her asexuality is woven into the same thread, so the story becomes one about who gets to decide what a woman wants. Even critical reviewers credit how carefully that’s done, and Kirkus singled out the prose as lyrical without losing clarity.

Where it struggles is pace, and that’s the most repeated complaint. The book runs well over 500 pages, and readers who stalled say the middle goes on a long time without much happening. The romance is a true slow burn. One 4-star reader joked that the two leads hadn’t so much as brushed pinkies 350 pages in. The other recurring objection is the voice. A vocal minority find the dialogue too modern and full of present-day therapy language, which one 1-star reviewer called pure BookTok, and a couple of readers bristle at changes to the source myth. A few also found the leads selfish, especially in how they weigh their own happiness against a city at war.

The expectation to reset is genre. The cover and the author’s profile suggest a swoony romantasy in the style of Girl, Goddess, Queen. Several readers say this is an older, heavier and harder book than that one. If you want romance front and center, calibrate. If you came for the women of Troy, you’re in the right place.

My honest note: A smart, angry, hopeful retelling with two heroines worth the trip, slowed by its length. If you love myth and can settle into a long slow burn, read it, and if modern dialogue in ancient settings bothers you, sample a chapter first.

Element	In The End Crowns All
Central relationship	Cassandra of Troy and Helen of Sparta: the disbelieved prophet and the woman blamed for the war
Core tropes	Myth retelling, rivals to lovers, slow burn, cursed prophet, asexual heroine, dual POV
Setting	Troy during the Trojan War, with the gods close at hand
Heat level	1/5: young adult, romance stays chaste
Series	Standalone; Hades and Persephone from Girl, Goddess, Queen make a cameo
Content notes	War, death and violence, sexual assault and a god’s sexual coercion, misogyny and sexism, child death, fire injury

How Spicy Is The End Crowns All?

The romance isn’t spicy. It’s a YA book, Kirkus lists it for ages 14 to 18, and romance.io doesn’t index it, which is normal for young adult titles. Cassandra is asexual, and her relationship with Helen is about trust and closeness, built slowly over a long book. Readers describe it as tender rather than steamy.

What you should know ahead of time is that the book deals directly with sexual coercion. Apollo’s pursuit of Cassandra is the root of her curse, and StoryGraph readers list sexual assault and sexual content as moderate warnings. It isn’t graphic, but it’s central. For other YA sapphic retellings at the same heat, Ruinsong and The Girl from the Sea are both 1/5.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you love Greek myth retellings centered on women, you want ace and sapphic rep in YA fantasy, you enjoy a very slow burn, and you like stories about being believed.

You may want to skip it if: long books with slow middles test you, modern dialogue in a historical setting breaks the spell, you want the romance to start early, or you want a retelling that stays close to Homer.

In short: the women of Troy finally get the story, at length.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

This one has an engine behind it. Fitzgerald built a large following on TikTok, and the Telegraph has called her a TikTok star. Her debut, Girl, Goddess, Queen, was a Sunday Times bestseller and won a Romantic Novel Award, so The End Crowns All arrived with a ready-made audience and a Penguin push. It has since been translated into several languages and picked up a US edition from Sourcebooks Fire. Kirkus reviewed it warmly without a star. The UK audiobook, read by Florence Howard and Roxy Faridany, runs 16 hours and 3 minutes. On Amazon it holds 4.5 stars across 151 ratings.

Prefer audio? Listen to The End Crowns All on Libro.fm, the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Helen first. She’s the character readers quote most, and her Spartan backstory is singled out as fresh. Then the feminism and consent themes, which even unhappy reviewers praise. Third is the ace rep, which several readers say they’d never seen in YA before. On StoryGraph the top moods are emotional, adventurous and tense, and 82% say the characters are lovable.

What readers argue about and complain about: Pacing, above everything. Readers who gave it two or three stars describe a middle that drags, and the slow-burn romance stretches that further. Second: the voice. A minority find the modern phrasing and therapy-speak jarring in ancient Troy, though one 5-star reader says the mix of poetic and modern never became jarring. Third: the leads’ choices. One reviewer was troubled that both women say they’d make the same choices again despite the cost to the city. The real split is the ending. Most readers love that it rewrites the tragedy into something hopeful. A few think that’s too neat, or too far from the myth.

The standalone question worth asking first: It’s a standalone and resolves fully. It shares a world with Girl, Goddess, Queen, and Hades and Persephone make an appearance, but you don’t need the first book. Readers who’ve read both mostly say this one is the older and more serious of the two.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Cassandra asexual in The End Crowns All?

Yes. Cassandra is asexual and romantically drawn to women. Kirkus describes her as cued asexual, and many readers call her the first ace YA lead they’ve read.

Is The End Crowns All spicy?

No. It’s a 1/5. The romance is a chaste slow burn, though the book deals directly with Apollo’s sexual coercion of Cassandra.

Does The End Crowns All end like the myth?

No. It reworks the tragedy toward a hopeful ending. Most readers loved that, while a few found it too neat.

Do I need to read Girl, Goddess, Queen first?

No. It’s a standalone. The two books share a world and a cameo, but the story stands on its own.

Is there an audiobook of The End Crowns All?

Yes. Florence Howard and Roxy Faridany narrate the Penguin audiobook, which runs 16 hours and 3 minutes.

If You Loved The End Crowns All, Read These Next

For another YA sapphic retelling, Ruinsong takes on The Phantom of the Opera with a rivals romance. For a shorter ace fantasy about a girl who fails the trial she was raised for, Keeper of the Dawn is a quick read. For a gentler sea-myth romance, The Girl from the Sea is a graphic novel that readers love. There’s more on the sapphic retellings page and in our Book Reviews.

The Bottom Line

The End Crowns All wants to give the women of Troy back their voices, and mostly it does. Helen, the consent themes and the ace rep all work. The slow middle, the modern voice and a hopeful ending that bends the myth won’t suit everyone. If you love retellings and don’t mind a long slow burn, it’s worth it. Check The End Crowns All on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, The End Crowns All ranks as a strong YA sapphic myth retelling. It’s driven by two great heroines and real themes, held back by length and voice. Read it for Helen and Cassandra rather than for a fast romance.