Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters is a charming modern take on a classic myth

Emily Roberson’s Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters puts a fun, fresh spin on a familiar Greek myth, turning a classic tale into a frothy, social media-fueled romp.

Greek myths are so hot right now. Technically, they’ve never really gone out of fashion, but right now, it feels like these stories are everywhere. Madeline Miller’s Circe was one of the bestselling books of 2018, and is now being adapted into an HBO Max series. Hadestown walked away with the Tony Award for Best Musical earlier this year. And popular web comic Lore Olympus is being turned into an animated series. Emily Roberson’s YA novel LIfestyles of Gods and Monsters is certainly capitalizing on this trend, but in a way that manages to feel fresh and fun at the same time.

The story is a modern update of the myth of Theseus and Ariadne, but reimagined in a world in which reality television, social media and celebrity gossip drives society as much as fear and/or worship of the gods. Here, Athenian teens compete for the chance to take part in a program called The Labyrinth Contest, a reality program in which each of them must face – and possibly die – at the hands of Crete’s famous Minotaur. The show is produced within an inch of its life, a sort of Greek version of The Bachelor but with a big heaping of gore and potential dismemberment on top.

Sixteen year-old Ariadne is the Keeper of the Maze, and shuns the glamorous life of parties, fame and social shares that drives the rest of her family. She alone can calm the rages of the Minotaur, which often shakes the ground beneath the city with earthquakes. What no one outside her family knows, though, is that the creature is also her brother, and suffers mightily in his condition.

When handsome contestant Theseus arrives and asks her to help him win and end this brutal contest forever, Ariadne is faced with an impossible choice. Can she betray her family and the brother she loves, even if his death might just be a mercy? Or will she let the boy she boy she loves face all but certain death?

If you know this original myth, you already know how this story ends, but LIfestyles of Gods and Monsters manages to make the journey there an entertaining one, full of fun modern day story additions and surprisingly rich character development. Roberson is particularly adept at centering Ariadne in this story, focusing on her desire not just to do right by the brother she loves, but to make her own choices about what her future will look like.

Her family, who are generally depicted as something of a Greek version of the Kardashians, turn out to be equally layered, with several dark and unspoken secrets of their own. Ariadne’s mother is strangely tragic, a figure of rage and unexpressed unhappiness that manifests itself in unfortunate ways. And her sisters Acalle are Xenodice, shallow social media influences on the surface, turn out to have surprising depths of their own – both in terms of the way they understand what’s happening in Crete and the lengths they have to go to maintain their position within their family’s entertainment empire.

Unfortunately, since we all know that Ariadne and Theseus are pretty much destined to happen, the story spends a little too much time stressing how suddenly attracted they are to one another. A bit further along in the novel, Roberson makes a valiant effort to let the mythological OTP really get to know one another – their heart to heart about how messed up both their families are is actually pretty great – but if you don’t like insta-attraction as a trope, you’re gonna have to power through their first few meetings.

All told, though, Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters is a great time – fast-paced, frothy fun that will appeal to anyone who loves these classic tales. Ariadne is an easy heroine to root for, and you’ll feel for the difficult emotional position she finds herself in. Her ending feels both satisfying and earned, and it’s exciting to feel that her future is still so wide open at the conclusion of the story.

Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters is available now.