A day or so ago Aimée was asking via Twitter about creating a Q&A vlog and she must have gotten lots of replies in the affirmative and so she had a post on her blog asking for questions. She answered some of my questions (yay, sort of geekily excited about that!) including one that I keep seeing about Henry in which people say he isn't like Hades, which I don't think is true at all. All of the answers were interesting and it's definitely something worth checking out if you loved The Goddess Test. Thanks, Aimée!

Author: Aimée Carter

Publication Date: 04/19/2011

Publisher: Harlequin Teen
    Pages: 304

    Source: Purchased

 Synopsis: 

It's always been just Kate and her mom—and her mother is dying. Her last wish? To move back to her childhood home. So Kate's going to start at a new school with no friends, no other family and the fear her mother won't live past the fall.

Then she meets Henry. Dark. Tortured. And mesmerizing. He claims to be Hades, god of the Underworld—and if she accepts his bargain, he'll keep her mother alive while Kate tries to pass seven tests.

Kate is sure he's crazy—until she sees him bring a girl back from the dead. Now saving her mother seems crazily possible. If she succeeds, she'll become Henry's future bride, and a goddess. (goodreads)

Moving from New York (hurrah, NY!) to Eden wasn't easy for Kate, but she was willing to make the sacrifice for her terminally ill mother who was sick with cancer. On the very first day driving into town things were strange, and she glimpsed someone standing in the middle of the road - or was it a hallucination? Her first day at school she meets James whom she quickly befriends, and bubbly Ava who begins a much more tenuous friendship and a one-way journey.

I really enjoyed this book. I was slightly hesitant coming in as coming from a background in Classics I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to separate myth from fiction, but found myself pleasantly surprised. You have to suspend disbelief a bit, but where myth is concerned you need to do that anyhow. The traits of the gods aren't set in finite stone as they are gods after all, and so the associated characterizations were believable given the modern context and story. I know some will have an issue with this and that's something I can understand, but I hope you'll give it a go because it really is a lovely story. There were a lot of little things peppered throughout it that were nice such as the inclusion of the river (the Styx), Cerberus (although this dog wasn't guarding anything that I saw), the seeds (pomegranate!) to name a few.

Kate is a strong female character who speaks her mind when she needs to and keeps quiet when she needs to. I mention this because it seems to be a trend to have really strong female characters, but sometimes they're too concerned with this idea of strong that they instead turn reckless and go the opposite way. For me, strong isn't always brute force and yelling what you think, it's also knowing when not to do those things. Kate balances this out well and I give Aimée Carter credit for doing a good job with that. The same for Henry; I've seen him be described as weak and un-godlike but I have to disagree with that. This telling of the story of Hades and Persephone is quite different in some respects and that, for me, makes all the differences as far as rationalising his character. Just because he isn't all fire and a booming voice doesn't make him any less Hades - in fact if he were like that the story would be quite dull as it wouldn't fit with the changes made to the myth. I rather liked Henry and look forward to reading more about where their path goes.

Just a quick side note: the big difference for me between The Goddess Test and Wither (and any other story where a girl falls unexpectedly into a relationship with a guy) as far as Kate and Rhine and whomever else are concerned is choice. Kate was able to make her own decision and that was a world of difference as far as how I viewed everything after that.

Apologies that this review is a bit light on story discussion, as that's mainly because I thought it was a fantastic book and I don't want to give anything away. The magic is in the details and that first read-through and an ending that I was happily surprised with. The sequel is definitely going onto the pre-order list!

Sunday has quickly become one of my favorite days of the week for this blog because I can watch how quickly my to-read queue on Goodreads gets longer and longer in the best way from visiting all of your sites. (I'm a day early! I've been a day off all week.) In My Mailbox is so kindly hosted by The Story Siren.

And, this week, in....my mailbox (too bad there's not dramatic silent picture music playing) is:

Bought: Divergent, Veronica Roth

The Goddess Test, Aimée Carter

Library: Wither, Lauren DeStefano

Entwined, Heather Dixon

I only chose to read books with gorgeous covers this week! Divergent is what I've talked so much about and the review is probably going to be coming in the next day or so when I have some time to sit down and prepare it. The Goddess Test is something I've been meaning to read since I heard of it (my first degree is in Archaeology so anything that touches on Greek or Roman mythology is an instant must-have) and I'm so happy that I can finally dig into it! Wither is a book I saw on a face out at B&N while I was reading Matched there and the cover is so gorgeous that I read the flap and was rather intrigued. I'm reading it now and it's going by pretty quickly, an interesting story. Entwined looks gorgeous. I've heard that's a really sweet rendition of Grimm's The Twelve Dancing Princesses and I love Grimm's, so that was an easy pick, too.

There may be some others that I'll throw on later in the week. (Oh, here's a kitty. So fun to type with a cat on your lap. Type pet pet type pet pet pet.) I'm excited to see what you guys are reading, and so is my kitty! ;)