When the goddess of love meets the only man who can resist her, obsession turns fatal.

William Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis was his literary debut and an instant Elizabethan bestseller, a scandalously erotic poem about desire, power, and what happens when you want someone who doesn't want you back. Venus, goddess of love, spots the beautiful young hunter Adonis and is consumed with lust. She pursues him aggressively, deploying every seductive argument in her divine arsenal. But Adonis isn't interested—he's young, he wants to hunt boars, and he finds Venus's desperate passion more embarrassing than flattering. What unfolds is a psychologically complex battle where the immortal goddess has cosmic power, but the mortal boy controls the only thing she wants. Shakespeare reverses traditional gender roles, explores consent and obsession with surprising modern insight, and wraps it all in some of the most gorgeously sensual verse he ever wrote. The ending is tragic, mythic, and unforgettable, proving that even goddesses can't force love, and beauty that won't surrender becomes the most dangerous prize of all.