Review: The Goddess Legacy

Author: Aimee Carter
Format: eARC
Print Length: 400 pages
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Published: July 31, 2012

For millennia we've caught only glimpses of the lives and loves of the gods and goddesses on Olympus. Now Aimée Carter pulls back the curtain on how they became the powerful, petty, loving and dangerous immortals that Kate Winters knows.

Calliope/Hera represented constancy and yet had a husband who never matched her faithfulness….

Ava/Aphrodite was the goddess of love and yet commitment was a totally different deal….

Persephone was urged to marry one man, yet longed for another….

James/Hermes loved to make trouble for others; but never knew true loss before….

Henry/Hades's solitary existence had grown too wearisome to continue. But meeting Kate Winters gave him a new hope….

My Thoughts

I received this book via the publishers through NetGalley.  That in no way influenced my review.

Never before have, I read a collection of novellas so beautifully intertwined.  The Goddess Legacy is a collection of five novellas centered on members of the Olympic council.  It is to serve as a prequel to the Goddess Test as well as the Goddess Interrupted.  Any book that makes you want to cry for someone who you have previously thought of as evil is a best seller.  The re-telling of the Greek Gods stories from another perspective really does give the reader insight into their actions.

If your heart does not break for Hera is in book than you are made of stone.  Hera, who knows that Zeus is not the man for her, continues to fight his suit.  She only wants a true partnership in marriage and Zeus tricks her into believing that she can have that with him.  No wonder she is bitter, for her own husband cannot give her what he promised her.

Aphrodite’s story is a little more difficult to find sympathy for.  The goddess of love is unable to commit to a relationship because she loves too much and too many.  Most loved of all her siblings by her father Zeus, she often comes off as a spoiled brat.  In the end she does redeem herself, choosing stability over passion.

Persephone is a young goddess that has been groomed all her life to love Hades.  Too bad her mother forgot about passion as well.  She marries Hades thinking that passion shall follow- when it does not she breaks his heart.  She falls passionately in love with her best friend.  Only to have her own heartbroken while spying on him.  Then she does the unthinkable, falls for a mortal willingly giving up her place as queen of the Underworld.  Her story made me resent her even more than I already did.  Although, her story also made me love Hades even more.

Hades story is heartbreaking as well.  So many times did he love, to have that love thrown back into his face.  While he insured that those he loved were happy, his happiness withered away.  It seemed unfair.  Will he ever be happy?  When will he stop putting others happiness before his own?

Hermes was shunned by his own family for others actions.  Instead of wailing in self-pity for too long he found another family to accept him.  Only to have that family ripped from his as well.  He does what he can to insure that the gods know why they are fading.  Proving his loyalty to his family regardless of the heartache they brought him.  Unbelievably amazing- will he ever have a happily-ever-after?

Speaking of happily-ever-after~ Hades has given up, and tells his family that he wants to fade.  The family argues bargains with him- a century for them to find his mate.  He allows this, with each gal that is suggested brutally ripped from his grasp by suspicious means.  When he declares he has had enough his sister Demeter tries one more time.  Will she be the one for him or will she die as well?  Will she be able to love him as he deserves to be loved?

My Rating 4 out of 5 stars

Other Characters

Zeus- King of the Gods, Hera’s husband

Demeter- Hera’s sister

Ares- Son of Hera, lover to Aphrodite

Hephaestus- Son of Hera, lamed by Zeus, lover of Aphrodite