“Euphoria is a meticulously researched homage to Mead’s restless mind and a considered portrait of Western anthropology in its primitivist heyday. It’s also a taut, witty, fiercely intelligent tale of competing egos and desires in a landscape of exotic menace—a love triangle in extremis…The steam the book emits is as much intellectual as erotic…and King’s signal achievement may be to have created satisfying drama out of a quest for interpretive insight… King is brilliant on the moral contradictions that propelled anthropological encounters with remote tribes… In King’s exquisite book, desire—for knowledge, fame, another person—is only fleetingly rewarded.” (Read the full review here.)

— Emily Eakin, New York Times Book Review

"With her influence on the sexual revolution, Mead was a globe-spanning iconoclast, alarming some and cheering others, becoming finally something of a totem upon which various groups cast their hopes and fears. So it’s refreshing to see the world’s most famous anthropologist brought down to human scale and placed at the center of this svelte new book by Lily King." (Read the full review here.)

— Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"Among the plethora of mysteries and assorted fiction that flow from Maine, it’s a rare novel that rises to the level of Euphoria.” (Read the full review here).

—Lloyd Ferriss, Portland Press Herald 

“Atmospheric and sensual, with startling images throughout, Euphoria is an intellectually stimulating tour de force.” (Read the full review here.)

—Jane Ciabattari, NPR

"Thrilling... intense, seductive, sexual, and intellectual... There are so many exhilarating elements to savor... By the end of Euphoria, this reader sighed with wistful satisfaction, wishing the book would go on. Brava to Lily King." (Read the full review here.)

—Joan Frank, San Francisco Chronicle

"It’s the rare novel of ideas that devours its readers’ attention. More often, as with Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries or Gravity’s Rainbow, we work our way through these books carefully and with frequent pauses, rather than gulping them down in long, thirsty drafts. It’s not a literary form known for its great romances, either, although of course love and sex play a role in most fictional characters’ lives. Lily King’s Euphoria, a shortish novel based on a period in the life of pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead, is an exception. At its center is a romantic triangle, and it tells a story that begs to be consumed in one or two luxurious binges... King is a sinewy, disciplined writer who wisely avoids the temptation to evoke the overwhelming physicality of the jungle (the heat, the steam, the bugs) by generating correspondingly lush thickets of language. Her story... sticks close to the interlocking bonds that give the novel its tensile power." (Read the full review here.)

—Laura Miller, Salon

"This novel is as concentrated as orchid food, packing as much narrative power and intellectual energy into its 250 pages as novels triple its size." (Read the full review here.)

—Marion Winik, Newsday

"A great novelist is like an anthropologist, examining what humans do by habit and custom. King excels in creating vignettes from Nell’s fieldwork as well as from the bitter conversation of the three love-torn collaborators, making the familiar strange and the strange acceptable. This is a riveting and provocative novel, absolutely first-rate." (Read the full review here.)

—Wingate Packard, The Seattle Times

"King immerses us so fully in the lives of her characters that they remain excellent company beyond the pages of this book. Her research is so well digested that she is able to drop us into the complexities of their work without being didactic." (Read the full review here.)

— Camilla Gibb, The Guardian

"Lily King has built her reputation as a gifted novelist steadily over three books. Her fourth, Euphoria—a smart, sexy, concise work inspired by anthropologist Margaret Mead—should solidify the critical approval and bring her a host of new readers.” (Read the full review here.)

Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer