We chat with author Jennifer Saint about This Immortal Heart, which is an epic, captivating tale of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who must reconcile her mind and heart when she is drawn against all odds to Ares, the god of war. PLUS you can read an excerpt at the end of the interview!
Hi, Jennifer! Welcome back! How have the past two years been since we last spoke for the release of Hera?
Very busy, especially since my recent decision to get a puppy – he’s a cute little cockapoo named Alfie and has turned my life completely upside down! Luckily, he is an adorable bundle of fluff with extremely persuasive puppy dog eyes. And he’s turning out to be a lovely furry companion snoozing at my feet while I write (in between causing chaos).
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
My mother tells me I was making up stories from the moment I could talk. She used to walk into the living room to find me acting out scenes I’d invented. When I learned to write, I started putting them on paper and the Christmas I turned eleven I asked for a typewriter. I promptly vanished upstairs and taught myself to touch type on Christmas Day so that my stories would look more professional!
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl in school when I was five – I was absolutely terrified! But couldn’t put it down until the crocodile had been safely blasted into the sun at the end.
- The one that made you want to become an author: Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice – the book I was obsessed with throughout my teens. Luckily none of the vampire fiction I wrote in homage has survived.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Enigmas by Emilia Hart – I’m lucky enough to have received an early copy of the bound manuscript and this book is sensational! I loved Weyward and The Sirens and this one is a beautiful exploration of mother-daughter and sisterly relationships set in WWII as a young woman gets a job as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park. It has a sliding doors element to it that makes me think about all the ways in which our choices have myriad and unforeseen consequences, some of them with the potential to change the world.
Your latest novel, This Immortal Heart, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Yearning, yearning, yearning, yearning, yearning
What can readers expect?
Maybe some yearning? I hope readers will find an Aphrodite they haven’t encountered before. Like all my novels, I like to cast the women of mythology in a new light and find a fresh perspective on their stories. This one is a departure from my others, as it’s my first foray into romance. Aphrodite and Ares are a legendary couple of myth and the quintessential enemies to lovers as the Goddess of Love finds she can’t resist the God of War. You’ll find an array of myths interwoven into the narrative and a story that’s brand new, fresh and romantic as well. I wrote this book as a beautiful place to escape into, and I really hope readers love escaping into it as much as I did.
Where did the inspiration for This Immortal Heart come from?
Standing in a rocky bay in Cyprus where Aphrodite was believed to have emerged from the sea. It’s a place of wild magic, where you feel a goddess truly could step from the waves and transform the world. I carried that feeling with me for years until the idea for the novel came to me. I felt really apprehensive about writing it, which was how I knew I needed to. With every book, I want to challenge myself to do something even better than before.
You delved into music in our last interview with you for Hera. Were there any songs that formed the soundtrack to This Immortal Heart?
Extremely specifically, the version of Daylight on the Lover Live in Paris album by Taylor Swift. It was a song that didn’t especially grab me on the studio album, but she performs it live on this EP with a beautiful intimacy that had me completely captivated. It formed the soundtrack to all of Aphrodite and Ares’ tender moments when I was writing. It’s a song that feels drenched in golden light and full of ecstatic possibility.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I probably had the most fun with Eris, Goddess of Strife. She accompanies Ares into battle and she lives to cause trouble wherever she can. Writing a character who is so devoted to chaos and collapse, and who is so intent on antagonising everyone around her was a joy, honestly. I especially liked the contrast between her and Eros, the beautiful son of Aphrodite whose pursuits are all about hedonism and desire.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
There is always at least one point in writing a novel (realistically, multiple points!) where it feels utterly impossible. That’s how you know you’re writing something good. In the age of AI encroaching into creative spaces at alarming speed, it’s so important to reiterate that there are no shortcuts to writing and nor should we be looking for them. The process is tricky and challenging and frustrating and that creates the magic. It’s a process of refining and digging into what story it is you want to tell. It’s never exactly the story you thought it was originally, but it always ends up as something much better. The only way to overcome the challenges is to keep writing, especially when it feels completely pointless to do so. That’s when you’re on the precipice of success.
What’s next for you?
I can’t say too much about my next book except that I’m writing it now, and it’s a return to a dual narrative. I love books with intertwining perspectives and I’m very excited to be shaping these new voices and figuring out how they’re going to fit together. I also have a side project that’s currently under wraps but is something I can’t wait to be able to talk about!
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
Nikita Gill’s Styx is the impeccable second instalment in her Underworld Goddesses trilogy and I think it’s even better than Hekate, which I wouldn’t have believed possible. She is an exquisite poet with a capacity for empathy and truth-telling that is unsurpassed.
EXCERPT
Inside the temple, the air is dim with fragrant smoke. The young woman moves steadily through the billowing clouds, her thin robe swishing at her ankles with every step. Her hair spills down her back, a dark river woven through with saffron ribbons that gleam in the firelight.
She drips honey into a shallow dish, a slow stream of amber, rich and sweet. The aroma mingles with the burning incense. It’s intoxicating.
Her head is bowed as she approaches the statue with her offering. It’s a clumsy likeness, ivory carved by human hands trying to capture the essence of a goddess they can hardly imagine, but her reverence is palpable-and so is her longing.
Lotus blossoms are festooned around the base, their sky-blue petals and sun-golden centers inviting. She sets the honey down at its cold, white feet. Another dish holds a pomegranate cut in two. Dark-red seeds spill from its tender flesh, soft and juicy and tantalizing.
She’s gazing at uncomprehending stone, never dreaming that the goddess she seeks is not in that vacant figure but behind her. The scent of her hair carries the freshness of the wind outside the temple, the one that shakes the leaves on the oak trees, the wind she sometimes whispers into, hoping I will hear her.
And, today, I will.
Inside this temple, we are all alone. Only she holds the keys to this sacred space; no other mortal can enter without her permission. She relishes that power, like I relish mine. I am the Goddess of Love, and she is my priestess. While she belongs to me, she will be safe from the dreary tedium of a husband and the long years of serving his needs.
Instead, she devotes herself to love. When I look inside her heart, I can trace the shape of her unspoken dreams, know who it is that consumes her every thought. The image of one of the other girls who worships here, sweet and pretty, rises in her mind. I feel my priestess’s heart surge with joy as though it beats behind my own breast.
She makes her devotions to my statue, but it isn’t her offerings that draw me here. It’s the rush of flames burning beneath her skin when she thinks of her beloved, melting her from within in an exquisite torture. That is the real gift to me.
Other gods demand blood and sacrifice. What I want from mortals are their secrets. The cravings that they cherish in private; the yearning that pulses through their veins and stirs their souls, that robs them of speech and thrums in their breasts like a hummingbird’s wings. I hear it all, every tentative hope, every forbidden want, every fragmented gasp of passion, and to me they are poetry.
With a final glance at the smooth skin of her cheeks, the sweep of her eyelashes and the pouting curve of her lips, I leave the temple, veiled in a mist that renders me invisible to mortal eyes. When she discovers that she has been rewarded and finds her longing is requited, she’ll give me grateful thanks, but I already have what I came for.
I soar out of the bronze-gated sanctuary of Paphos in the form of a dove, fluttering through the pink skies of dawn as the sun rises over the island.
The awakening of desire in my priestess stirs that same sensation within me, and I fly from my sanctuary to a secluded bay, sheltered by rocky cliffs, where I know he’ll be waiting for me. As I land, he emerges from the sea, the sunlight sparkling off the rivulets that run down his broad shoulders. I shrug off the illusion of my feathered disguise, a goddess again.
His name is Nerites; a sea-god, only minor in the hierarchy of deities. He rules over shellfish, his days spent overseeing scuttling crabs and thorny sea urchins, presiding over the lives and deaths of clams and oysters and mussels. Some marine-gods are fish-tailed, their blue-tinged skin crusted in barnacles; old men of the waters with gills and flippers and straggly beards. Not Nerites. He’s a fine example of a young god in his prime: strong and vital and perfect. My eyes linger on the smooth muscles of his chest, the taut outline of his upper arms and his mesmerizing green eyes, the same shade as the watery depths from which he’s emerged.
He opens his mouth to greet me, his words spilling out with eager haste, slipping over one another like wriggling fish, before I silence him with a hand to his lips. My nails shine, shell-like and delicate, against his salt-roughened jaw, and I enjoy the contrast for a moment before I pull his face to mine, surrendering once more to the thrill of that familiar, irresistible force.
Later, when with a longing glance, Nerites plunges back beneath the waves, I stretch out on the sand, a pleasant ache tingling through my body at the memory of his touch. He’ll be gliding between the tall fronds of kelp by now, swimming through the submerged forest, green-gold sunlight split and refracted through the salt water. He’ll pass spongy blooms of mauve and lilac coral, softly waving tentacles of colorful anemones brushing his skin as he descends into the silent, shadowed halls of the sea-gods. Somewhere in those waters, the dress I was wearing will still be drifting, a diaphanous ghost lost to the tides. I wonder if the currents will carry it to him, if he’ll see it and take it, a keepsake of this most recent of our trysts.
I close my eyes, the late-morning sun warming my bare skin, bright behind my eyelids. A haze of dreams flutters around me, lulling me into sleep with the whisper of soft-breaking waves and the distant call of wheeling birds.
A ruffle of wingbeats rouses me and I lift myself onto one elbow, shading my eyes as I peer up into the sky. I smile as the dark silhouette takes form: sweeping gold-feathered wings, a headful of shining curls, the lithe torso of the most handsome and delightful god I know. My son, Eros.
He lands gracefully and tosses me a wide square of fabric, his eyes twinkling with amusement as he points upward. “Helios is right above us,” he says.
“I suppose he is.” I drape the cloak around my shoulders. The Sun God’s chariot is directly overhead, the glare of the shining orb he pulls across the blue dome spilling its light across us, dazzling and clear. I know how he likes to spy.
“A sea-god?” Eros asks.
“Shellfish,” I reply.
He laughs, and I see echoes of myself in his carefree attitude and the delicate shape of his face. He has no father; it was my body alone that brought him forth when I was still a new goddess. His talents stem from me—his ability to conjure infatuation, to breathe passion into souls mortal and divine, to whisper words of flattery into hopeful lovers’ ears so that they can charm the object of their desire.
“So,” he says, sitting on the sand beside me, tilting his face up to the gentle warmth, “what happened to the son of Eos? Have you replaced him so quickly?”
I shrug. Eos, the Goddess of the Dawn, some years ago bore a mortal son with a face as glorious as her most beautiful sunrise. He grew up to become a young man so striking, he caught my eye from the heavens. “It was a brief affair,” I agree. Like a fire, it burned bright and burned out. For me, anyway. “He keeps a temple to me now, in the land of his father to the east.”
Eros nods. “Anyone else?” he asks.
I sit up higher. “Hermes stole my sandal.”
Eros laughs again, low and mellifluous. “As a means of seduction?”
I roll my eyes. “His idea of one,” I say. “For the God of Trickery, I thought it was quite poor. He sent an eagle while I was bathing in the River Achelous. It snatched up one sandal—I think he hoped I’d go and ask him for it back.”
“Why not?” he asks. “Hermes is handsome.”
“He is.” A god of careless elegance and quick wit, not unappealing in the least. “But imagine if Zeus heard of my taking up with one of his sons. He’d try to marry me off to him before I could even get the sandal back on.”
Excerpted from This Immortal Heart by Jennifer Saint Copyright © 2026 by Jennifer Saint. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
