Review: Cleopatra

Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi

Published By: Harper Collins
Publication Date: February 24, 2026
Date Read: March 10, 2026
Genre: Adult – Historical Retelling
Source: eARC from Netgalley
Format: E-Book / Audiobook
Pages: 384

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Queen, Legend, Cleopatra tells her own story in this evocative and sensuous historical epic Cleopatra, from the bestselling and award-winning author of Faebound and The Final Strife .

YOU KNOW MY NAME.
BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW ME.

Your historians call me seductress, but I was always in love’s thrall.

Your playwrights speak of my witchcraft, but I was gifted my talents by the gods.

Your poets sing of my blood-lust, but I was protecting my children.

They cannot credit that a mere woman could be powerful, strategic, divinely blessed to rule.

Death will silence me no longer.

This is not the story of how I died. But how I lived.

I’ve been a huge fan of Saara El-Arifi ever since I read The Final Strife. Ever since then, I have devoured everything that she writes. So despite me not being a big historical fiction reader, just the fact that Saara’s name was on the cover meant that of course I was going to read it. I jumped at the chance to read this early, but honestly it took me a little while to get through this one. That is not to say it’s not a great book, it absolutely is, I just found it a book you needed to take your time with, rather than flying through it.

Cleopatra made me quickly realise that prior to reading this book, I knew absolutely nothing about Cleopatra! There were moments early in the book where it would say things like ‘but as we know, things didn’t work out like that’ and I was sat thinking…. oh didn’t they? Because I have no idea. That’s one of the reasons I really enjoyed just taking my time with this book. I know this is a fiction reimagining, but it was really nice to learn about Cleopatra’s life throughout this book.

I really enjoyed Cleopatra, but honestly I did struggle with the pacing of the book a little bit. It’s not necessarily that it’s slow as lots of plot points happen straight out of the gate. But I struggled to read a lot of it in one go. I found I needed to read it, little bits at a time. Although I had an ARC of this book, I didn’t actually finish it until after release date, so I ended up swapping from e-book to Audiobook and I am so glad that I did. The fantastic Anjoa Andoh narrates it and I loved her narration right from the get go. If you’re an audiobook lover, I would highly recommend the audiobook of this book.

I’m so glad that I read Cleopatra. While there is a little bit of magic with the gifts from the Gods mentioned, I kind of wish there was a little more magic. I know this is not a fantasy book, but with me having read and loved Saara’s fantasy series, I ended up missing the fantasy elements of her writing. I won’t be switching my love of fantasy books for historical any time soon but I did really enjoy this one, and I will definitely be reading more of Saara’s historical if/when she writes more.