The Goddess Test: 09/23/11

The Goddess Test by Aimée Carter because of both the title and the cover. I don't usually read books with pretty girls in flouncy dresses but Sarah Reck made it sound like my kind of book. She was right!

The book opens with Kate driving her ailing mother to the family home in Eden. She has decided this will be the place where she will spend her last days before cancer finally takes its toll. Staring at a new school, making new friends and all that other teenage stuff is the last thing on Kate's mind. Her whole life revolves around caring for her mother.

Eden at first glance, feels artificial. Kate's new schoolmates act as strange as the town feels. For Kate, she's too wrapped up in her mother's illness to notice or care. That is until the nurse convinces her to spend a night out.

Things don't go well that night and Kate ends up trading half her life for the life of another. She's also asked if she knows the myth of Persephone. While she doesn't, she will by the end of her ordeal.

After the oddball set up, The Goddess Test quickly settles into being either a retelling of the Persephone story, or more properly speaking, a sequel to it. Kate is the thirteenth young woman recruited to go through a series of tests to see if she is worth of being the next Persephone. If she fails, then Henry (aka Hades) will forfeit his throne to an unnamed successor.

The staunchest critics of the book complain that The Goddess Test is too far removed from the original myths. I don't mind. It felt no more a stretch of the imagination than Rick Riordan's recent books.

Review copy via NetGalley

Four stars.

Comments (0)