The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter

TL;DR a poor adaptation of the mythology of Persephone and Hades

(finished 4/3/15)

So the whole concept of The Goddess Test and the first couple chapters seemed fairly solid. It just went downhill pretty quickly.

And honestly, I can't say that it's a terrible book. It's just really mediocre. I didn't really feel any attachment for any of the characters, there was lots more telling than showing, and apparently all the mythology was messed with. I can't really comment on the mythology because 85% of my knowledge comes from Percy Jackson, but everyone just seemed kind of flat and none of the character dynamics really made sense to me. I don't even think the gods' human-like personas made sense. They only related tangentially to the Greek gods that I'm familiar with, Percy Jackson or otherwise. They mainly only had one characteristic of the god they were supposed to be, and even at that it felt like a really weak connection. It would kind of be like saying I'm Athena just because I study stuff of my own free will sometimes. It doesn't work that way. 

And the premise of the tests seemed pretty weak. I'm not going to go into all the mythology and Greek vs Christian principles, because just about every review I looked at on Goodreads talked about it. The tests were a pretty weak judge of character even overlooking the whole "Christian principles applied to ancient Greek gods" thing. I feel like those tests didn't prove anything near to Kate being "worthy" of immortality. Heck, I probably could have passed those tests. 

Kate and Henry's relationship is something that's been bothering me as I thought through my opinion of the book. Like, on the surface, I felt like I should have been happy with their relationship. It was fairly chaste, save for one scene that was out of their control regarding tampered food. It just didn't feel genuine. The narration was too packed, so there were only like one or two scenes that actually displayed the two interacting, rather than just Kate narrating it in passing after the fact. It felt like there was no chemistry. But at the same time, there are still infinitely worse couples in YA, and that's really infuriating to me to not even be able to rank them that low. 

Speaking of the narration: it felt like something aimed at the very young end of YA. Like, Kate can't even bring herself to talk about sex in the open. She refers to it multiple times as "that", italics and all. The only people that do that are kids in elementary school who are just starting to understand the concept of sex. No eighteen year old dances around the topic like that. Even as a super asexual person I have no problems with saying the word, though I do try to avoid learning the graphic details of other peoples' sex lives. I feel like Kate falls into the category of narrators where the writer underestimates or doesn't really understand the demographic. And a lot of the book was just Kate talking about stuff happening, rather than her describing the things as they happened. I'm pretty sure January through March happens on a single page. It's really boring. The Goddess Test isn't action-y at all. 

I honestly didn't feel like finishing this all the way through. The main thing that got me through it was needing to review it, since I feel like I need to know the whole story before I write something up. (Meaning that I'll probably never review a DNF.) Also, I was bored in school. My social media only updates so often and I have one teacher that would kill me if I tried to check my twitter after I caught up with my work. 

TL;DR I don't think it's really worth the read. I mean, maybe if you're bored or need something to get frustrated with. Definitely don't read it if you like Greek mythology the way it is.