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Submitting to Cerberus
Previously Six Months with Cerberus
Cerberus, son of the dragon Typhon, hundred-headed hound to Hades, Gatekeeper to the Underworld, Watcher of all the souls in Styx, and first shifter, senses an unauthorized mortal in Hades’s domain. And when that mortal tries to escape, he does what he’s always done best—stops them.
What he doesn’t expect is a beautiful human woman cowering beneath his blade. When she begs for his help to leave Hades’s realm, his loyalties are tested unlike ever before.
--- Submitting to Cerberus is an Enemies to Lovers mythos romance rife with intrigue, gods, power play, manipulation, and schemes. Mature readers only.
Cerberus, son of the dragon Typhon, hundred-headed hound to Hades, Gatekeeper to the Underworld, Watcher of all the souls in Styx, and first shifter, senses an unauthorized mortal in Hades’s domain. And when that mortal tries to escape, he does what he’s always done best—stops them.
What he doesn’t expect is a beautiful human woman cowering beneath his blade. When she begs for his help to leave Hades’s realm, his loyalties are tested unlike ever before.
--- Submitting to Cerberus is an Enemies to Lovers mythos romance rife with intrigue, gods, power play, manipulation, and schemes. Mature readers only.
314 pages, Paperback
Published December 29, 2022
1 person is currently reading
178 people want to read
About the author
Naomi Lucas
42 books1,609 followersNaomi Lucas is an indie author. She loves being creative whether it’s with painting, writing, or making little jingles about her dog, Barracuda, or her cat, Daliah, in the car.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 15, 2023
✨3 - 3.5✨
Definitely a short, sweet story, and loved some of the moments between our main protagonists.
But it definitely felt like something was missing from the story. Like some parts were waiting to be filled in and go more into detail..
Even as a simple one-shot story, the background knowledge and world building felt lacking, and I wish it was a little more in-depth.
All in all:
Many things seemed glossed over or simply missing from the story.
Cerberus and Cyane's relationship development was very fast paced, which I don't have a problem with, but we are missing answers as it is staged like there's a profound and deeper reason behind it. e.g.:
Why does both of them, especially Cerberus, react so strongly to each other from the beginning? What makes her so different for him since he's never had such a reaction to anyone before?
But we never get answers to this, and it feels a little unfulfilling 🫣
🤍Still a very cute read, albeit a little unsatisfying.🤍☕
Definitely a short, sweet story, and loved some of the moments between our main protagonists.
But it definitely felt like something was missing from the story. Like some parts were waiting to be filled in and go more into detail..
Even as a simple one-shot story, the background knowledge and world building felt lacking, and I wish it was a little more in-depth.
All in all:
Many things seemed glossed over or simply missing from the story.
Cerberus and Cyane's relationship development was very fast paced, which I don't have a problem with, but we are missing answers as it is staged like there's a profound and deeper reason behind it. e.g.:
Why does both of them, especially Cerberus, react so strongly to each other from the beginning? What makes her so different for him since he's never had such a reaction to anyone before?
But we never get answers to this, and it feels a little unfulfilling 🫣
🤍Still a very cute read, albeit a little unsatisfying.🤍☕
February 9, 2025
DNF. Life is too short to force myself to finish reading this book
lost-interest
August 11, 2025DNF @ 28% unfortunately. After reading Lucas's tropical dragons series, I found each book worse than the last, with the first one being fun and decent, the second being a drag and step down in general while still telling a good story, and the third one unfinishable and just pointless, so I skimmed that final one. I was sad to find myself skimming this one too and even then didn't feel much except annoyance and disappointment, so I stopped.
The mystery of Cyane's life (stupid name, I kept calling her Cayne, like pain, but I'm pretty sure it's pronounced like the color cyan) was fascinating but not set up or explained well at all; we're told by the blurb she's an orphan who grew up in care with nothing from her birth family but a note saying to meet come to a festival in Italy when she's 24. As far as I can tell we don't know what country she's from/raised in, what her adult life and living situation is like, does she work, have friends, did she ever get adopted? What was living in care or an orphanage like? Lucas doesn't think those questions matter.
Or if she does answer them it's way too far into the book for me to care. These details are the core of who our main character is and the motivation for her in the story as well as the cause of the inciting incident. Why are we told none of the answers? It should be the establishing foundation, because we know NOTHING about Cyane, she has seemingly no personality besides being dumb and impulsive.
It's hard to even believe a woman wrote this: if I as a dude, albeit a very feminine gay one, wrote a young woman traveling alone who mentions point blank she's been warned about the dangers of solo travel as a woman many times but still gets on a random boat alone with a strange man who offers to sail her to another country for free? Who she met literally a minute ago? Without even making a single attempt to arrange alternate travel plans? I'd be laughed out of the room. "No woman would ever do that!" But here we are lol.
As a character she felt like an empty prop who existed to move the story along except every time she did so it was by doing something she had no reason to or that didn't make sense, from what little I saw. She felt like one of those characters where something is missing to the point where you wonder if there's a little brain damage and then start feeling bad for judging this grown woman for having the mind of a naive child.
But she's not a person. She's not a character. She's just nothing. I can tell you zero facts about her life or personality, and after 28% of your book, that's a big damn problem.
Why does she want to find her birth family?
Is she angry at them? Does she love them and hope they love her? What does she feel having them in her life will fulfill? What was growing up alone without them like? How did it shape her self-image or her views of family?
WE. DON'T. KNOW.
Because Naomi Lucas doesn't care. All she cares about is that this woman is a vessel for the reader. And I think that's lazy as hell.
We get an actual character from Cerberus at least, one who is even kind of interesting and unique, who made me want to learn more about him. I enjoyed reading his chapters. At first. They devolved quickly. Hades, Hermes, Melinoe, etc all acted like children. And I get that the gods can be immature and selfish and playful, but they came across as stupid shallow frat dudes, particularly Hades and Hermes, and she was doing that thing were Hades is portrayed as Hell instead of just the afterlife, with Hades being an evil king with Daddy Satan vibes. I just can't get behind the Christianization of Hellenistic myths. Leave the Greek gods out of your bullshit.
Hades is all like "Persephone pretends to be a good girl when she visits her mom, no need for her mom to see the real her and just worry!" but then he's also like "She hates it here, she's never slept with me, she won't acknowledge me as her husband, wah." Like I'm supposed to care they have a dead bedroom.
There are moments here and there that genuinely feel like, oh, there's something here. But it's bogged down by generic writing that runs the gamut from halfway decent to actually straight up bad, and a lack of characterization or depth to anybody we're meeting that just makes it feel kind of cheap.
Beyond that I didn't like the lead and couldn't bring myself to care about her super mysterious family and whatever gods or goddesses they're going to turn out to be. I don't care about the mystery of this character's origins because I'm sure it will be as stupid as her existence in general was.
Frankly I'm starting to doubt Lucas is the author for me; I keep seeing flashes of talent and interesting choices but she always backpeddles and makes it generic, cheap, and dumb, either to rush out a profitable commercial romance or because KU readers actually want dumbed down slop, I don't know, but it's sad seeing a premise and a cover like this totally wasted on a story that feels like a high schooler's first attempt at a novel.
It's shocking to me that there are multiple reviews saying they 'don't get the bad reviews' when I'm over here surprised there aren't more, honestly.
I'm not star rating this because I didn't finish it and despite ripping into this book I don't want to be mean and lower the average rating of a book I didn't fully read. But from what I did read, it's not worth my time. I think Lucas can do much, much better than this.
The mystery of Cyane's life (stupid name, I kept calling her Cayne, like pain, but I'm pretty sure it's pronounced like the color cyan) was fascinating but not set up or explained well at all; we're told by the blurb she's an orphan who grew up in care with nothing from her birth family but a note saying to meet come to a festival in Italy when she's 24. As far as I can tell we don't know what country she's from/raised in, what her adult life and living situation is like, does she work, have friends, did she ever get adopted? What was living in care or an orphanage like? Lucas doesn't think those questions matter.
Or if she does answer them it's way too far into the book for me to care. These details are the core of who our main character is and the motivation for her in the story as well as the cause of the inciting incident. Why are we told none of the answers? It should be the establishing foundation, because we know NOTHING about Cyane, she has seemingly no personality besides being dumb and impulsive.
It's hard to even believe a woman wrote this: if I as a dude, albeit a very feminine gay one, wrote a young woman traveling alone who mentions point blank she's been warned about the dangers of solo travel as a woman many times but still gets on a random boat alone with a strange man who offers to sail her to another country for free? Who she met literally a minute ago? Without even making a single attempt to arrange alternate travel plans? I'd be laughed out of the room. "No woman would ever do that!" But here we are lol.
As a character she felt like an empty prop who existed to move the story along except every time she did so it was by doing something she had no reason to or that didn't make sense, from what little I saw. She felt like one of those characters where something is missing to the point where you wonder if there's a little brain damage and then start feeling bad for judging this grown woman for having the mind of a naive child.
But she's not a person. She's not a character. She's just nothing. I can tell you zero facts about her life or personality, and after 28% of your book, that's a big damn problem.
Why does she want to find her birth family?
Is she angry at them? Does she love them and hope they love her? What does she feel having them in her life will fulfill? What was growing up alone without them like? How did it shape her self-image or her views of family?
WE. DON'T. KNOW.
Because Naomi Lucas doesn't care. All she cares about is that this woman is a vessel for the reader. And I think that's lazy as hell.
We get an actual character from Cerberus at least, one who is even kind of interesting and unique, who made me want to learn more about him. I enjoyed reading his chapters. At first. They devolved quickly. Hades, Hermes, Melinoe, etc all acted like children. And I get that the gods can be immature and selfish and playful, but they came across as stupid shallow frat dudes, particularly Hades and Hermes, and she was doing that thing were Hades is portrayed as Hell instead of just the afterlife, with Hades being an evil king with Daddy Satan vibes. I just can't get behind the Christianization of Hellenistic myths. Leave the Greek gods out of your bullshit.
Hades is all like "Persephone pretends to be a good girl when she visits her mom, no need for her mom to see the real her and just worry!" but then he's also like "She hates it here, she's never slept with me, she won't acknowledge me as her husband, wah." Like I'm supposed to care they have a dead bedroom.
There are moments here and there that genuinely feel like, oh, there's something here. But it's bogged down by generic writing that runs the gamut from halfway decent to actually straight up bad, and a lack of characterization or depth to anybody we're meeting that just makes it feel kind of cheap.
Beyond that I didn't like the lead and couldn't bring myself to care about her super mysterious family and whatever gods or goddesses they're going to turn out to be. I don't care about the mystery of this character's origins because I'm sure it will be as stupid as her existence in general was.
Frankly I'm starting to doubt Lucas is the author for me; I keep seeing flashes of talent and interesting choices but she always backpeddles and makes it generic, cheap, and dumb, either to rush out a profitable commercial romance or because KU readers actually want dumbed down slop, I don't know, but it's sad seeing a premise and a cover like this totally wasted on a story that feels like a high schooler's first attempt at a novel.
It's shocking to me that there are multiple reviews saying they 'don't get the bad reviews' when I'm over here surprised there aren't more, honestly.
I'm not star rating this because I didn't finish it and despite ripping into this book I don't want to be mean and lower the average rating of a book I didn't fully read. But from what I did read, it's not worth my time. I think Lucas can do much, much better than this.
December 16, 2023
2.5/5, rounded down because of all the wasted potential. I'm torn with Naomi Lucas - her stuff is just so inconsistent in quality. Like most Kindle Unlimited authors, the need to churn out 3+ books a year to stay relevant and make decent money means that authors do not have time or incentive to develop plots with care.
This could have been soooooo good. The ideas were there! But the pacing is always off, the characterization is thin, and the smut is perfunctory at best. The Cerberus concept was really interesting, but not enough was done with it. Ditto for Cyane's backstory. The smut being lame and basic is disappointing because Lucas' spice usually works for me, and if the scenes were further fleshed out, they could've been sweltering. Like, submitting is in the title, why not actually explore that with some depth?
.5 of the stars are for the cover.
This could have been soooooo good. The ideas were there! But the pacing is always off, the characterization is thin, and the smut is perfunctory at best. The Cerberus concept was really interesting, but not enough was done with it. Ditto for Cyane's backstory. The smut being lame and basic is disappointing because Lucas' spice usually works for me, and if the scenes were further fleshed out, they could've been sweltering. Like, submitting is in the title, why not actually explore that with some depth?
.5 of the stars are for the cover.
May 5, 2023
I really don't understand the bad reviews on here. The story was well paced, well researched, and steamy. I've been following her works for a long time and this is definitely in my top 3.
October 8, 2023
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/6.
🌶️🌶️.5/5.
I enjoyed this quite a bit. I feel like some parts of the story were a bit repetitive however I was intrigued to see how Cerberus and Cyane would end up together and throughout so many hoops they finally were able to be together.
Cerberus is the loyal servant of Hades to a 'T' but then Cyane invades Tartarus and that loyalty starts shifting which led to some deals being done.
I liked Cerberus and Cyane's relationship and especially how innocent Cerberus was and he just wanted to be warm and Cyane was the perfect thing to warm him everywhere.
There were some twists and turns that I suspected but these Greek Gods almost gave me a headache because of how much schemes were afoot. Hades felt like an evil character, as he should, but by the end of it I liked him. He went about things in the wrong way but he had the best intentions and I guess that's what Persephone sees in him.
I enjoyed this and read it in a day.
🌶️🌶️.5/5.
I enjoyed this quite a bit. I feel like some parts of the story were a bit repetitive however I was intrigued to see how Cerberus and Cyane would end up together and throughout so many hoops they finally were able to be together.
Cerberus is the loyal servant of Hades to a 'T' but then Cyane invades Tartarus and that loyalty starts shifting which led to some deals being done.
I liked Cerberus and Cyane's relationship and especially how innocent Cerberus was and he just wanted to be warm and Cyane was the perfect thing to warm him everywhere.
There were some twists and turns that I suspected but these Greek Gods almost gave me a headache because of how much schemes were afoot. Hades felt like an evil character, as he should, but by the end of it I liked him. He went about things in the wrong way but he had the best intentions and I guess that's what Persephone sees in him.
I enjoyed this and read it in a day.
December 23, 2025
DNF it was very hard to read the book, i liked the naga bride series, but this book was boring, I know a little about mythology but even so, I had a hard time remembering enough to understand the characters jokes.
I didn't like the characters too, the mc felt a little dumb... I'll try reading other books from her instead, this was not my cup of tea.
I didn't like the characters too, the mc felt a little dumb... I'll try reading other books from her instead, this was not my cup of tea.
November 25, 2024
i truly don’t understand the bad reviews.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews