All you need is love...

4:48 pm 5 July 2015

TW. Rape, Attempted Rape...

There are stories that you know hope you are going to love: this was one of them.

From the synopsis to the first pages of this book, I knew I was going to devour this!

"It’s a beautiful sight, which only saddens me, because all of that talk about death and beauty being intertwined is one of the biggest loads of crap I’ve ever heard. Death isn’t beautiful. Too often than not, it’s messy and brutal; even when done in sleep, there’s still that theft of breath, that failure of a heart. Death is an act of violence.
I should know. I am one of the most prolific murderers in history. And I think about death constantly."

And I definitely would have loved this, if all of a sudden the story hadn't changed to a YA/ new adult (with traces of cheesy) romance.

"All I can think is, stars above, I am so incredibly blessed to have this man in my life."

Don't get me wrong. I like to read romance just like everyone else, but when a story is supposed to be about a character's growth, a character who has been raped and mistreated by almost every one else who has come into contact with her, you bet I am going to get angry if I only get people telling that girl (I don't care about the two thousand years old she has in her, she reads as a sixteen year old)what to do!

And that is what happens in this story: Not for once do I see Medusa acting like an assertive woman.

Not for once does she feel grow-up to me. Something that ends up being even more problematic when she starts being sexual active with... you know who.

For me this book suffers from something I like to call "multiple personality book disorder" (I really should create a shelf for these books).

This is supposed to be a mythology retelling. Instead all I got from it was a teen soap opera. When you have Gods and Goddesses behaving as fluffy kittens out of some Regency novel, things are bound to get strange.

And boring...

Zeus in flip flops and shorts?

Aphrodite acting like some sort of romantic saint?

Hades consulting his Ipad while throwing amused glances to his wife, the lovely Persephone?

Athena acting like someone who needs a straitjacket?

Poseidon, the crazy obsessed rapist?

Could all of these characters be more one dimensional?

I don't think so.

I swear that I never thought I would encounter such an amount of giggling, eye rolling, blushing and snorting amongst these Greek divinities.

It got embarrassing to read... and boring :/

So, for the mythology part? This gets a zero.

This story was supposed to be about Medusa, and it was, up until the moment the curse is removed.

Way to soon in my opinion. When she loses her "monster body" and "her girls"( the snakes) she also loses her identity. From that moment on, until the very last page, we get treated to how sweet and kind Medusa (Dusa) flourishes among her friends' care.

Everyone decides every single thing for her! From what she should do to what she should wear. o_O

I just wanted to scream at the girl: Get a Backbone!

Much has been talked about the romance, and I agree, Hermes is a great guy( he would have been greater, if he had kept himself ensconced in the story's background).

And we get treated to that... a lot. I lost count to the amount of times Medusa tells us about his current eye colour: more green... more blue... more green again...

Like I said, her mental processes read as those of a young teen falling in love for the first time.

Which she does.

I guess this being a New Adult story explains all of that.

Towards the end, the drama and angst level got to such proportions that I really had to force myself to keep reading this!

Too long and filled with unnecessary details, this ended being a chore to finish.

______________

And to see what I had to go through I will leave you with some of my annotations while reading it

I've read 75%

_ Someone has just told Medusa that she isn't in condition to think properly all by herself...

o_o

Once again the character fails to show a hint of backbone.

_Medusa is now writing love letters to Hermes in her journal...