Review: The Goddess Legacy by Aimee Carter

The Goddess Legacy by Aimee Carter
Published: July 31st, 2012 (Harlequin Teen)
Pages: 395
Source: for review
Series: The Goddess Test, #2.5
Buy the book: Bookdepository
Rating: ★★★☆☆

Note: this is not the first book in a series, and can therefore contain (minor) spoilers for the previous book(s) in the series. Reading of this review is at your own risk.

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.

Five original novellas of love, loss and longing and the will to survive throughout the ages.

While I wasn’t exactly raving about The Goddess Test and Goddess Interrupted, I was intrigued by this collection of short stories. To be honest, I don’t think I would have read this if I hadn’t gotten it for review, but ultimately I quite liked reading these novellas.

My biggest problem in the first two books in the series is that the Greek gods don’t act like gods at all. While I understand that you can get quite bored when you live for eons, I fail to understand why they all have to be whiny spoiled brats. However, in these novellas I feel like we see the gods being a little more mature, a little wiser for their age. I liked that. I felt like I was reading about the mighty gods again. Yes!

For me, this setting works better. I like the gods more true to their nature so this was right up my street. While I don’t think I will really love this series, I found this anthology of novellas enjoyable and am quite glad I decided to spend my time reading it. I’m curious to see what Carter does with the last book of the series; some of these stories showed some background info that I think might be essential to understand the characters (in this case Carter’s interpretation of the gods) in what they are doing. Thankfully I already have The Goddess Inheritance, so I won’t have to wait for the conclusion. This book has given me hope that I will be able to enjoy the conclusion to The Goddess Test, so I’ll be reading that soon.