This is an essential book in the new and rising volume of retelling from the women’s point of view – so revealing and questioning. Poets, playwrights, and painters have been creating their own iterations of the Olympian gods for thousands of years. Ariadne’s life has always been touched by the gods, as her mother, Pasiphae, is the daughter of Helios, god of the sun. I saw her weighed down in the tumultuous water not just by the iron chains in which my father had bound her but also by the terrible truth that she had sacrificed everything she knew for a love as ephemeral and transient as the rainbows that glimmered through the sea spray.

We’d heard the story of how he had cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa, and we thrilled to hear how the snakes that grew from her dreadful head writhed and spat and hissed as Perseus swung his wondrous sword. In a world where women are nothing more than the pawns of powerful men, will Ariadne’s decision to betray Crete for Theseus ensure her happy ending?I did not feel like an annoying child, a daughter who would never command a fleet of ships or conquer a kingdom and so was of little use or interest to Minos. I watched how she flung herself into the music and transformed it into a graceful frenzy, and I followed suit. Elodie Harper, author of THE WOLF DEN 'With her wonderfully executed debut that reimagines the classic tale of Theseus, Adriane and the Minotaur, Jennifer Saint joins the likes of Madeline Miller and Pat Barker in forging mesmerising retellings of ancient Greek myths from a female perspective.

Stylist As Princesses of Crete and daughters of the fearsome King Minos, Ariadne and her sister Phaedra grow up hearing the hoofbeats and bellows of the Minotaur echo from the Labyrinth beneath the palace.For Ariadne, she falls in love with Theseus at first sight, and she devises a plan to help him make it safely through the maze.