The Goddess Legacy by Aimee Carter

The Goddess Legacy by Aimee Carter
Release Date: July 31, 2012
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Source: Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Summary

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…(courtesy of Goodreads)

Review

The Goddess Legacy is a companion novel to the Goddess Test series. I've read the first two books in this series and have enjoyed, although not loved, them. I picked up The Goddess Legacy partially out of curiosity and partially because it was there. Let me tell you, The Goddess Legacy has entirely changed my feelings about this series. I went from a quasi-admirer to a full-fledged Goddess Test fan girl! The Goddess Legacy is the best book of the series so far and has made the prior two books much more meaningful and interesting.

The Goddess Legacy tells the stories of the gods and goddesses who form the backbone of Kate's new life. If you're familiar with Greek mythology, you'll have a basic framework of each character's story, but Aimee enriches the personalities and lives of each one hundred times above whatever you've learned before. Everything about the series makes so much more sense to me now.

It's hard to describe each story without giving spoilers for the series as a whole. The synopsis actually does a good job of giving general information without revealing too much. In general, the story makes unlikable characters seem, if not more likable at least more pitiable. The characters who I adored before are still likable, but also more complex and flawed. Almost everything in The Goddess Test series that confused me was based on some unstated fact of the characters' earlier lives. Now, I feel like a part of the family - I get the inside jokes.

The Goddess Legacy is set out in four short stories. I've never been a big short story fan, because I find them too choppy. Aimee does a good job of linking all the stories together and making it feel more like one book. There are still points where things are disjointed, but not to the level where it irritated me. My one complaint is probably that is that the characters went by their traditional names, rather than their modern monikers which are used in The Goddess Test. There was a character list at the beginning of the novel, but since I was reading an e-book, it was hard to follow. But I caught on eventually.

I highly recommend The Goddess Legacy to anyone who has tried The Goddess Test, even if you didn't like it. In fact, I think you could read The Goddess Legacy before reading the first two books in the series. It will give away some big secrets of the first book, but will also add layers of richness that you wouldn't understand otherwise.

Rating: 4 / 5