A Touch of Darkness

The review

Persephone is the Goddess of Spring, except flowers wither under her touch. She has been hiding as a mortal journalism student in New Athens, until she sits down at a card table in a nightclub owned by Hades, God of the Dead, and loses. The price is a contract: create life in the Underworld, or lose her freedom forever. A Touch of Darkness is the self-published Hades and Persephone retelling that built one of BookTok's longest-running mythology romances.

The engine is the bargain. Persephone has to tend a garden in the Underworld under Hades's eye, and every visit chips away at her idea of who he is. St. Clair's Hades runs a gambling empire, keeps his word with frightening precision and turns out to care about the dead more than anyone above ground cares about the living.

The journalism subplot is what makes it a romance with friction: Persephone is writing an exposé on the man she is falling for, and that betrayal hangs over every scene. Her mother Demeter is the overbearing antagonist, and the clash between a goddess who wants her daughter caged and a god who wants her free gives the book its best moments.

The heat: four peppers. It is open door and explicit once the slow burn breaks, and the forbidden, power-imbalanced dynamic is a big part of the appeal. It is steamier than ACOTAR book one and less kinky than Neon Gods.

Know before you start: it is book one of a long saga told largely from Persephone's side, with companion books that retell events from Hades's point of view. The ending is happy for now; their story continues. The prose has a self-published looseness that some readers find charming and others find rough. If you came for the Hades fantasy, it is one of the most beloved versions on the shelf.