Monday, November 12, 2012

The Goddess Legacy by Aimee Carter


The Goddess Legacy by Aimee Carter
ARC received from Harlequin via Edelweiss
Release Date: 7-31-2012
Reviewed by: Jennifer McCoy at YA Sisterhood

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#151;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….



After reading The Goddess Legacy, I find myself somewhat disappointed especially since I absolutely love the first two books in this series. I love Aimee’s characters, and I find her spin on the Hades/Persephone myth intriguing. While the novellas did give me insight into each of the Gods, I didn’t find myself really enjoying their stories that much, which is upsetting as I was really looking forward to these!

I will say that the novellas helped me understand the actions of some of the Gods in the books, especially Calliope. Her novella really shows her the pain and anguish that she has dealt with for millennia and why how her circumstances turned her into a monster. You really start to feel sorry for her because of the terrible things that happen to her, but it’s hard to bridge that with the terrible person that is ruining Henry and Kate’s lives in the actual novels.

Persephone’s novella was also telling, but I have to admit I dislike her quite a bit after reading it. It seemed the novella was trying to get us to understand her dilemma and why she acted in the way she did, but I truthfully just thought she was petty and selfish. I actually somewhat like Persephone in the books, but after these, I kind of want to smack her.

The only novella I think I really enjoyed (besides the small glimpse at Henry which was so short I don’t think it should even have been considered a novella) was Ava’s (Aphrodite). I really enjoyed seeing how she ended up with Hephaestus. I also enjoyed seeing Ares in her novella because we really don’t see much of him in the books and I have always been curious.

Henry’s was the novella I was looking forward to because he is so closed off in the books and you just don’t know what he is thinking or feeling. I was hoping for some insight into why he loves Persephone so much and why he has a hard time showing Kate how he feels. But, his novella was so short, mainly showing us what we already knew in the books, so I was really disappointed.

Overall, it was neat to get some insight into why the Gods act the way they do, seeing their misery and pain manifested into their stories; however, I just felt like I was having to force myself to read through the novellas. Nothing really grabbed me and made me want to keep reading.