The summary: Aimée Carter's The Goddess Test is the first book in the Goddess Test series - technically a trilogy, but with the apparently essential Books 1.5 and 2.5, I'm not entirely sure what that makes it. Anyway, the book opens when Kate Winters, a teenage girl, and her mother Diana arrive in Diana's town of origin, Eden, so that she can die of the cancer that has left her struggling for life in the place where she was born. Here Kate meets Henry of the mysterious Eden Manor - and promises to live with him for half of the year in return for her mother's life. Her challenge is to pass seven tests within the next six months, which may seem simple before considering that the eleven girls before her have all died before the testing period ended. If she passes them all, she'll become immortal. If she fails, she will lose all memory of Eden Manor, and Henry (or, if he's telling the truth, Hades) will fade from existence.
The plot: While this seems to be a retelling of the popular Persephone myth, in reality it's merely a story loosely based off the myth, and only loosely based off Greek mythology at all. It's a refreshing take on the story, though, and I found myself staying up late at night to find the answers to my questions. Will Diana survive? Why have all of the past girls died? And - most importantly - will Kate pass the tests? It's by no means an action story, but it's a beautiful tale of contemporary Greek gods. People who are educated about mythology may be frustrated by how different The Goddess Test really is from the Persephone myth, and Kate's lack of knowledge about mythology can be a bit annoying, but the minimal mythology involved makes it a perfect YA story for both people who can't get enough of mythology and people who know very little about it.
The characters: Kate was a fun narrator to follow through her story, and I was rooting for her the entire way. She's very relatable - to me, at least - and I loved reading about her. (Bear in mind that I've read this book at least three times and I still can't get enough of her. She's just incredible.) As for Henry, he started out fairly distant, which made his change later in the story (no more details on that - don't want to give out any spoilers!) a bit unbelievable, but I came to love him by the end of the story as well. The other characters, unfortunately, were less than remarkable. Other than Ava, Kate's friend, Carter never gives many details about any of them, and there are a few who are only mentioned once or twice but seem fairly important posthumously. Those characters who end up being gods don't seem to share many qualities with their gods, so that was somewhat frustrating, but it's understandable that Carter would want to make the characters her own instead of sticking to the Greek myths. (Calliope especially frustrated me when it came to this.)
The romance: Okay, I absolutely love romance books, and this one didn't fail to impress. It's impossible to think that a story based off Persephone could not have a romantic relationship of some sort, and it's that relationship exactly that made the second half of the book so fun, and why I especially couldn't bear to think about Kate failing her tests.
The score: I'd probably give this a 3.5/5 stars. It's a fun plot with a great love story, but the characters were sometimes annoying in that they weren't very much like their respective gods and that they weren't ever described in very great detail. I also wish it stuck to the idea of Persephone a little more, but it's still a good book as it is.
The cover: I really love the Australian cover, just because of the beautiful picture and fonts, but it doesn't match the plot at all and, as another blogger revealed here, the image is anything but original: it's the same background as Saundra Mitchell's The Vespertine, Eden Maguire's Dark Angel, and Maite Carranza's Eine magische Sommernacht, and (according to the model) from the same shoot as Lisa Kleypas's Un jour tu me reviendras and Janet Fox's Forgiven. So, for the sake of the plot and originality, I'm going to have to go with the American cover on this one.
Australian; American
~Sky
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