Sunday, April 7, 2013

Review: Goddess Interrupted by Aimee Carter

Kate Winters has won immortality.

But if she wants a life with Henry in the Underworld, she'll have to fight for it.


Becoming immortal wasn't supposed to be the easy part. Though Kate is about to be crowned Queen of the Underworld, she's as isolated as ever. And despite her growing love for Henry, ruler of the Underworld, he's becoming ever more distant and secretive. Then, in the midst of Kate's coronation, Henry is abducted by the only being powerful enough to kill him: the King of the Titans.

As the other gods prepare for a war that could end them all, it is up to Kate to save Henry from the depths of Tartarus. But in order to navigate the endless caverns of the Underworld, Kate must enlist the help of the one person who is the greatest threat to her future.

Henry's first wife, Persephone.

Paperback, 304 pages

Published March 27th 2012 by Harlequin Tee
(info grabbed from GoodReads)

This review contains spoilers if you haven’t read The Goddess Test.

So from where we left off in The Goddess Test, everyone is a God, Kate and Henry are happily married, and all should be good, right?  Not so much.  Calliope is crazy and wants to destroy the world by releasing the Titans.  The strongest of the Gods go off to combat Calliope, leaving Kate to another dangerous quest.  This quest is even more challenging than the deadly test from the first book: Kate has to deal with Henry’s ex-wife Persephone!  *gasp* THE HORROR.

Okay, seriously, this is the real thing that did make me adore this book.  Kate has to deal with REAL marriage issues all the while in a very unreal setting.  The way the author crossed real life into the world a paranormal romance book was pure genius in my humble opinion.  I loved the way we got to see Kate struggle with emotions of being cut off from her husband and the jealousy attached to not being the first wife.  The way the novel was set up made the ending all the more heartwarming.

Goddess Interrupted proved itself to be more than The Goddess Test: there was more drama, more action, and more intrigue.  The stakes are higher as Kate is defending the world instead of just her own life.  The Goddess Test almost seems like a prequel with how it shows how Kate ended up from being a normal teenager to now being a Goddess with the real story starting with Goddess Interrupted and concluding with The Goddess Inheritance.  The one thing that did make me want to pull out my hair was the devious cliff hanging ending.  WHY AIMEE CARTER?  …I’ll forgive you this time, but only if The Goddess Inheritance holds up to the standard of the previous books.

Final Thought: 22 out of 25 toadstools

This review is also posted on GoodReads

4 comments:

  1. I had to skim this because I haven't read The Goddess Test yet, but I'd be interested to know what you think makes the difference between a good mid-series cliffhanger and a cliffhanger that actually makes you mad at the author.

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    1. I actually had to think for a few days before responding. I'm not a giant fan of cliffhangers to begin with, but in this book... just... ARGH. I don't think is a badly written cliffhanger as it doesn't feel like the book was unfinished. That would really be a bad cliffhanger. A good cliffhanger piques your interest and makes you excited for the next book, and there are various degrees of that feeling. This book (as well as Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver or Of Poseidon by Anna Banks) is an extreme example of a cliffhanger in that the reader is kind of sucker-punched with a new development that won't be explored or discussed until the next book. Cinder by Marissa Meyer I thought was a very balanced cliffhanger in that you feel anxious to know what happens next and want/need the story to continue, but there wasn't that jarring feeling. This is also dependent on the reader; for example, Beta by Rachel Cohn was probably an attempt on an extreme cliffhanger, but it just didn't do anything for me because I didn't care about the characters by the ending. Some people (I'm assuming) love cliffhangers, others don't -- and that really changes the definitions of what a good cliffhanger could be.

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  2. Great review! I confess that I only skimmed this book- but only because I had to return it to the library the next day!

    I really liked the romance between Kate and Henry- it's so darn sweet! I was pretty annoyed by how distant he was being in this book, though.

    But really. DAT CLIFFHANGER.
    I just- I don't even- That was quite possibly the evilest cliffhanger I have ever read about.

    On a side note, how do you feel about all these gods having different names? On the one hand, I think it's a creative premise for the story, but on the other hand, IT REALLY BUGS ME. I have a hard time keeping track which god is which and it's like Aimee Carter is totally messing up my perception of mythology.

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    1. Kate and Henry give me the "D'AWWWS" :D I thought his distance made the ending parts all the more special. And swoon-worthy. Hehehe... swoon.

      The Gods having different names was confusing. I didn't really see the need for it and thought it kind of annoying to have to flip to the back to get a refresher on who's who. But in a way, it made me think of the characters as characters completely outside of their intended correlated God. So maybe that was Aimee Carter's aim? I'm gonna go with that since it makes her seem brilliant.

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