Review: Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ava Reid comes a reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her.

The Lady knows the stories: how her eyes induce madness in men. 

The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his warrior ways behind when he comes to the marriage bed.  

The Lady knows his hostile, suspicious court will be a game of strategy, requiring all of her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive. 

But the Lady does not know her husband has occult secrets of his own. She does not know that prophecy girds him like armor. She does not know that her magic is greater and more dangerous, and that it will threaten the order of the world. 

She does not know this yet. But she will.

• Title: Lady Macbeth
• Author:  Ava Reid
• Publisher: Del Ray
• Publication Date: August 13, 2024
• Genre: Fantasy, historical fiction, retelling 
• Targeted Age Range: Adult
• Content Warnings: rape, domestic abuse, murder, blood & gore, sexual content, torture, violence, war, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, lobotomy (on-page), child death, ableism, misogyny, infidelity, animal sacrifice, dissociation, pregnancy, poison, alcohol, emesis, xenophobia
• Rating: ★

Wow, um, I honestly don’t know where to start. I don’t think it pains anyone more than me to be writing a negative review for a very highly anticipated read of 2024, but alas, that is what is happening here.

When the announcement of Lady Macbeth was first released I was SO excited. I’d never read anything by Ava Reid, but we all know I will read anything related to Shakespeare. Especially something that is a retelling of/inspired by Lady Macbeth, who is, in my opinion, one of the greatest characters Shakespeare ever wrote and unanimously his strongest female character. I feel that there’s so much to explore with Lady Macbeth and so many interesting ways you can interpret her. I was excited to see what Reid would do with this iconic character.

Apparently the answer was that she would rip her to shreds. I genuinely question if Reid has actually read Macbeth before, and if so, how in the WORLD do you read it, see the character of Lady Macbeth and then write this. I know that this is a retelling and it doesn’t need to exactly follow the source material and characters, that’s the whole point of a retelling, but I have a real problem with a retelling about one of the most powerful literary female characters where the author decides to remove all of their agency and make them weak and powerless. It’s especially upsetting in 2024, and even more so when it’s done by a female author, which is exactly what Ava Reid did. 

Ultimately, I think the biggest disappointment is that this book had so much potential and it feels completely wasted. I loved the inspiration taken from Medusa (truthfully, I don’t know if this was intentional, but that’s the vibe I got) and the serpent motif throughout the book to reference Lady Macbeth’s iconic line “look like the innocent flower,/ But be the serpent under’t” Those two things alone had so much potential and nothing really came of it and that frustrated me to no end. The plot with the witches was interesting, but again, nothing actually came from it. This book felt like a jumble of half-baked ideas thrown together with really poor characterization.

I saw a different review refer to this book as a character assassination, and that is exactly what this book is. In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is a puppet master. She is conniving, cunning and intelligent. She is bold and unapologetic, unsentimental and will do anything to rise to power. Where is that woman here? She literally is nowhere to be found. Where Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth had agency and ambition, Reid’s Roscille is neither of those things. 

Roscille is a seventeen-year-old (why?) bastard daughter of a French nobleman who can compel men to do her bidding simply by looking them in the eye. That’s such a great concept, however, it was so upsetting how little she actually used this power. We’re constantly told how smart and clever Roscille is; she’s so much smarter than everyone around her and yet she makes the dumbest choices. She lacks any sort of subtlety or cleverness that she claims to possess and none of her actions make sense. Now, there were a few moments that I would’ve actually called her clever, but then when actual consequences came from the actions that she “orchestrated” (such as the request that leads to Macbeth taking Cawdor, or Banquo’s death), she would act so shocked at Macbeth’s “brutish behavior” or act like that wasn’t her intention behind her request or phrasing; even though in the moment we would be told that she knew what these requests would lead to. She contradicted herself at every turn, and the absolute lack of spine that Roscille had was astonishing, and led to me rolling my eyes for the majority of the book.

In the summary for Lady Macbeth it says, “From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ava Reid comes a reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her.” I’m sorry, WHAT? Who wrote that? Did they read this book because literally none of that is true. At no point does Roscille have a voice throughout this story, and at every opportunity she has to use the power she has or take ownership of her choices, she doesn’t. She sits back and lets the men take over. She has absolutely no power, or agency (half the time this is of her own doing), and no personality. I had hoped that this would change by the end of the book, and in a moment where it would’ve been great to see her take revenge against a man who did her wrong, she instead gets saved by her lack-luster love interest who can also turn into a dragon (I can’t even get into this plot line). While yes, she has a “revenge” moment at the very end, it fell completely flat. Had this been a story where she starts powerless and actually takes control of her life and her powers and gets revenge on those that have wronged her, I would’ve been happy with it, and while I think that’s what Reid was trying to accomplish, that’s not at all what happened. 

What did the Scottish people ever do to Ava Reid? I swear 90% of this book is just Roscille talking about how horrible every single Scottish man is, and it all was very xenophobic and it made me feel very uncomfortable. Were any of the men in this book good or worthy of praise? Absolutely not. However, half the time whenever Roscille said something about how stupid or violent they were they weren’t actually doing anything? She took every opportunity to talk about how uncivilized they were (because they fought wars? like every noble/royal?) and how it was so different from her father’s house (it’s not like he was a great guy either?) and it was very off putting. When these men were actually acting horribly I had no issue with her saying so, but she definitely was prejudiced against the Scots from the beginning and I don’t know it just felt very “all men bad, Roscille (the only woman) good”.

I’m not Scottish, so I can’t really speak to any inaccuracies, but I did find a review from a person from Scotland and from a town in the region in which Macbeth takes places, so I’d check out this review to read a bit more about the inaccuracies Reid made when it comes to Scotland/Scots. 

There are basically no women in this book. There’s her handmaiden that comes with her to Scotland, Hawise, who disappears after a few chapters (do we actually know that she died? Roscille seems to but I don’t think we ever get confirmation), and then a woman from a nearby village who was going to be killed for “sleeping around” who becomes Roscille’s new handmaiden. Also, please note that neither of these women are pretty or attractive in any way, Roscille is the only pretty woman there is and it’s very important that we know that. We’re told that noble Scottish women don’t have any servants and do everything themselves, which seems completely unrealistic and would lead the reader to believe that it means all the Scottish men do all the tasks that women at the time would typically do, which doesn’t at all align with the “Scottish men are violent and brutish neanderthals” vibe that Reid was going for. Many things about this book felt contradictory to itself. 

Whenever someone mentioned Ava Reid they were always talking about her beautiful prose. Where was that beautiful prose here? There were some lines that I thought were great and really powerful. For instance, I loved the line “They have stood together this whole time, husband and wife. The hand and the dagger. Lord and Lady Macbeth” that’s great, I love that! There were a few other lines that I thought were good and interesting, but everything else felt so repetitive and lacking any sort of depth. I could see glimmers of good writing throughout the book, but most of the time it felt very basic, and again, absolutely no characterization happened in this book. There was an absolute lack of depth to any aspect of Lady Macbeth.

I feel like Ava Reid was trying to emulate the whole “Lady Macbeth is actually the puppet master but let’s Macbeth think that it’s him” thing that Shakespeare did so excellently, but she completely failed at it. The hopes I had for this book were high, and honestly, I’m so disappointed and so glad that I borrowed this book from the library and didn’t waste my money on it. Normally, even with books I don’t like, I can see why others would enjoy it, but unfortunately, that’s not the case here. This was my first Ava Reid, and based on my lack of enjoyment with this one, it’ll most likely be my last.

Links for Lady Macbeth: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop