Aphrodite Made Me Do It is a poetry collection for every fem, feminist, or fan of the goddess of love. In this empowering retelling, she uses the mythology of the goddess to weave a common thread through the past and present. For fifty years, she has trained to slay wyrms - but none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation. The feeling and expression of strong emotions acts as the healthy catharsis that can allow poet/goddess/woman to open her heart to the peace, self-love and joy that she deserves. Reading as a glimpse into the private thoughts within a self-care, healing journal, Aphrodite Made Me Do It is a survivors story that speaks to women everywhere, in fierce and loving tones.

I think maybe I lack the background knowledge of the scenarios which were at the times of classical poets or I also lack the classical vocab too. This is a battle cry that screams down the ages, using its voice to speak for Medusa, Circe, Aphrodite, and every single person who reads these pages. Known for her eponymous blog, she is now the author of multiple poetry collections, including When The Stars Wrote Back (2020), Aphrodite Made Me Do It (2019), Honeybee (2018), and The Dogs I Have Kissed (2015) which won a Goodreads Choice Award the year of its release. Scattered between the explorations of weighty emotions are lighter notes, in the form of motivational quotes and illustrations, linked to the theme of that section.

thank you SO much to my dear friend, kerri (kerrithebookbelle), for getting me a personalized copy of my new favorite poetry book of all time. I opened the book to “start” reading, and ended up reading the entire thing without putting it down. aphrodite then (as the feminist, lgbt icon she is) explains the power of love and forgiveness to our narrator. I think it's great that so many people can turn to writing to express their thoughts, heal from their pasts, and fight for social justices. It is an authentic dialogue between the poet and Goddess Aphrodite on various themes like love and hate.

The author uses this dialogue to explore ideas of womanhood, and womanhood in relation to the ideas that the goddess represents: pleasure and pain, love and sex, beauty and the gentle, suffering female. Men said she was the perfect vessel for evil to enter the world, but men are the ones who wrote the stories. With fantastic chemistry between the two protagonists (who I knew I would be rooting for from their first meeting! In response to these representations, the poet presents the reader with a powerful goddess, who knows her own mind and who is very angry.The poems here combine to make a feminist manifesto that inspires strength, courage, pride, and a negation of all society deems a woman's body to be and all the multitudes it actually contains.