Scarlett St. Clair is a beautiful genius. She’s written one story from two different point of views and split it into two different books, but, you guys, it’s good. I was SO skeptical about reading the exact same story twice in a row, but Scarlett expands on the tale in such a deliciously rich way. So let’s get into it.

Friends, this is a safe space, right? If I admit something to you, you won’t come for me, right? Okay. Here goes. Hot take, I didn’t think Midnight Sun was that bad. Wait wait wait wait. Don’t leave! Hear me out. I said “not bad”, not that it was my favorite book ever. Listen, I appreciated seeing Edward’s side of the story. I thought it was interesting and entertaining. Plus I like getting into the MMC’s head. Obviously. Just look at how many MM books I read. So, to get a whole book re-told from his perspective was neat. For me. That being said….

THAT BEING SAID…Scarlett St. Clair knows the job. She made up for all of the cringe that was Midnight Sun and gave us two books with two different POVs in such a way that it was worth our time (all of our time) to read. In the second book, she truly enriched the story, giving new details about what was happening while Persephone was worrying about boy trouble. Lol.

I’m getting ahead of myself. A Touch of Darkness is a Hades and Persephone retelling with a modern twist and some liberties taken on the mythology. For the first 18 years of Persephone’s (Goddess of Spring) life, she was sequestered to the garden greenhouse and home schooled. Her mother, Demeter (Goddess of Harvest), who I pictured as Mother Gothel from Tangled, wholly controlled Persephone by not only keeping her from society, but suppressing her powers. At 18, she was allowed to attend college and live as as a mortal, glamoured to hide her divine form. We come into the story as Persephone is wrapping up her final year of our journalism degree, has a best friend Lexa, an internship at New Athens News, and an established life outside of Olympia.

Lexa convinces Persephone to celebrate her internship with a night out at Nevernight, the famous club owned by Hades. It is during this fated night that Persephone invites a mysterious man to a game table with the hopes that he will teach her how to play poker, with the reward being questions answered. Little does she know that she is entering a contract with Hades. She ends up tied to Hades for the next six months (…which coincidentally is exactly how long she has until graduation…I see you, Scarlett…), tasked with creating life in the underworld. But, remember before when we learned that Demeter has been suppressing Persephone’s powers? Yeah.

We watch as, over time, Persephone learns that Hades is not the feared and dark god that the Upperworld paints him to be. However, once we get into Hades’ perspective? Oh man. He’s such a sad, lonely (quite frankly…horny) emo boy. The self-loathing is strong with this one. He fancies himself unworthy of partnership and love, which, after supposedly one million years of existence, where his sole focus is ruling, literally, a death world, tracks. Anyone would be a little depresso espresso if that was their purpose.

This is a little spoilery, but Hades learns early on that Persephone is his fated mate, destined to be his wife and Goddess of the Dead. And, yes, you will shout at him for the entire book to just tell her already. There are several threats roaming the worlds that could potentially cut this thread, including the Fates themselves. We also get the sense that war is on the horizon and that these two books are truly only the beginning to this story. I cannot wait to see what’s to come.

Before I close, I want to quickly touch on Scarlett’s absolute perfected writing of side characters. The friend banter that develops between Hecate, Hermes, and the main characters is just the best. It allows for some laugh out loud humor, warmth, and subtle nods to their extremely long relationship. You can tell that Scarlett is a talented writer as she seems to trust the read to pick up on small details to gather the point and understand exactly what’s happening.

There’s one other element that is so special to me that Scarlett has chosen to weave through the story, which is this element of healing from trauma, addiction, etc. I have a lot of feelings about this, but I think I’ll write a separate post about it because there are some other books that I could bring into the discussion that also do this topic justice. But I wanted to note it here that the inclusion of Elysium being a place of healing and peace is just…I can’t even think of a strong enough word.

Anyway, this is a much longer post than I usually do, so if you read the whole thing, thank you! Please go read both A Touch of Darkness and A Game of Fate. If you want to check out Scarlett St. Clair’s other books, you can go to her website here. If you want to chat about it, feel free to leave a comment below.