The Goddess Test

Henry Katherine Winters was his last hope. After nearly a century of failed attempts to find someone to rule beside him in the Undeworld, he was ready to accept defeat and give up his immortal existence. He agreed to give it one last try, but he couldn't imagine Kate succeeding where the others had failed. Each one of the girls he hoped would stand by him had died. None of them even making it to the end of winter to face the council to see if they'd passed the seven tests required of them. And after countless disappointments he was nearly overwhelmed by despair. But Kate had a fierce loyalty and determination that sparked something in him, offering him a glimmer of hope where none had existed before. If he could just keep her safe until the council's vote and if she could just pass those seven tests, she could fill the vacancy left by Persephone in his heart and as his Queen. Kate She would only need to spend six months of every year by his side, free to do as she chose during the spring and summer seasons. So what if she didn't love him. Even if it meant an eternity with a man she barely knew, if it could save her mother, or even give her just a few more months to say goodbye, she was willing to make that sacrifice. Her mother was all she had, her best friend. It's not like Eden Manor was a prison. And it's not like Henry was an ogre. He was beautiful. He was immortal. And if she passed the tests and accepted the role as his wife she, too, would be immortal. She just needed to figure out how to pass the tests and keep herself safe until spring. But the more she got to know Henry, the more she realized that it wasn't just her life that she was worried about saving, but her heart. *** The Goddess Test is absolutely charming and delightful and is an extremely entertaining modern take on the mythological Greek gods. It is one of those books that make it so easy to fall in love with the story, the characters and the writing. Right from the start, readers will be able to see exactly who Kate is, and so each decision she makes is very believable for her character. Henry remains somewhat of a mystery but readers will learn enough to know whether he is worthy of their sympathy and their, and Kate's, affection. There are a few mysteries woven into this story of a girl who is willing to do nearly anything to protect those she cares about, that will keep readers hooked - How did Kate's predecessors end up dead and what can she do to stay safe? What exactly are the seven tests? And who are the gods that will be passing judgment? Author Aimée Carter does an amazing job of updating and aging the gods for the modern day, while keeping the original myths very much intact and smoothly incorporating them into the story in a way that does not feel heavy-handed. The Goddess Test is a love story, a mystery, and a test of strength, determination and loyalty and is a fantastic start to this new series. The ending wraps up nicely but with the door wide open for what is to come.

Well this is certainly a change of direction if I ever saw one. I'll admit I definitely try my hardest to have an open-minded approach towards every conceivable genre when it comes to reading fiction, yet romance has always been a subject of scrutiny for me. It's not that I feel romances can't be engaging, but I do possess several legitimate reasons behind my alienation of the genre. I often feel most stories that focus entirely on a romance often end up feeling rather pretentious in the long run. I believe a story's romance should be interwoven into the plot as a means to effectively illustrate characterization while still maintaining the gravitas of the plot. Though the worst offense I feel a romance novel can make is present a relationship entirely revolving around sexuality, completely devoid of any form of true love. Thus the emotional investment the author is trying to invoke from the reader is completely lost on delivery. While I'd rather avoid picking out any examples, I will say that the most popular romance novels fall into both of these trappings. This brings me to The Goddess Test, a rather risky undertaking on my behalf given my grievances towards the genre, yet it still managed to draw my attention. Perhaps it was its mesmerizing cover that garnered my curiosity as I strolled down my local bookstore. I knew it was out of my normal preferences, yet I found the story's premise fascinating enough to warrant giving it a try. Fortunately it was a gamble that ended in my favor. I won't go as far as to say it completely redefines a predominantly stagnant and unimaginative genre, yet it succeeds in creating a novel that will resonate with people whom enjoy fantastical romances while addressing the severe issues which I feel greatly hinder the genre as a whole. We follow the protagonist, Kate Winters, as she returns her mother to her childhood home of New Eden, a remote town seemingly in the middle of nowhere. As the book's synopsis clearly states, Kate has always been with just her mother, both as her single child and her closest friend. Unfortunately their time together is going to be severely cut short, for Kate's mother is suffering from a terminal illness that will supposedly kill her within the next few months. After several twists and strange cases of the unexplainable, Kate runs into Henry, otherwise known as Hades the Greek god of the Underworld. If she can pass the gods' test of immortality, she'll be able to give her mother the farewell she deserves and live the rest of eternity as Henry's wife, and as a goddess. Only problem, every girl that has attempted to pass the test has been killed, and Kate is next. It's definitely a refreshing change of pace to find a romance that doesn't feature vampires for once. (Yes people, there are other tragic literary figures other than just vampires) The emphasis on Greek mythology definitely helps The Goddess Test develop its own identity, and the substantial source of lore to draw from greatly benefits the book's world-building. With plenty of tales involving romance and injustice, the utilization of Greek mythology makes for great source material to craft the story's backdrop. Though a word of warning, if you aren't familiar with Greek mythology than don't use this book as a basis for understanding the subject. It's clear that Carter wanted to take her own spin on Greek myths, resulting in a reimagining of the various mythological figures in a contemporary setting. It's an interesting approach that gave the book an extra bit of flair. I've seen a few reviews panning the book's unique rendition of the ancient mythology and all the flawed idiosyncrasies the book introduces. I have to disagree with these criticisms, for this isn't meant to be a one-hundred percent retelling. Even with their powers, these Greek gods are portrayed as human beings with all the emotional baggage and flaws that come with it. This isn't a textbook, expecting them to each perfectly resemble their individual legend is unrealistic, and frankly it would diminish the characters' overall complexity and make them resemble bland caricatures. Kate Winters is an excellent protagonist to the story and one that I feel resonates with just about anyone regardless of their gender. This brings me back to my early issue with contrived romances; I'm referring specifically to the ones that focus entirely on the relationship between the two leads and nothing else. I feel this approach results in narratives that suffer from painfully bland plots with no stakes and predominantly two-dimensional characters. The Goddess Test doesn't fall into this negative trope fortunately, for Kate has a higher purpose in the story rather than chasing after an attractive paramour. All she desires is to help ease her mother on her passage to death, and remind her of how much she loves her both as a daughter and as a friend. It's very endearing and I feel anyone with a loving mother can relate to Kate's crisis. Because of the emphasis placed on a larger cause, the book immediately benefits from a richer narrative, thus making the romance between Kate and Henry come off feeling completely genuine in its execution, a rather stark juxtaposition when compared to other contemporary works that portray cases of rampant hormones being passed off as true love. While Kate was a character I knew would emotionally invest me from the outset. The big question for me was if Carter could make Henry a character that I would care about as well. This brings forth my second issue with romances: relationships based solely on sexuality. This is the greatest flaw I feel a romance can exhibit; it prohibits any hope of emotional attachment to the story and more often than not makes the entire book fall apart. The most obvious malefactor of this issue is the male protagonist; I find that the majority of characters in this archetype featured in literary romances to not only be incredibly stoic, but also lacking in any real character depth, in other words: they're boring. Henry was admittedly showing signs of living up to this unfortunate stigma and garnering my concern. Fortunately, Henry is anything but two-dimensional and is a great counterpart to Kate in a manner that makes sense. As is the case for the majority of the cast of characters, Carter draws upon Greek mythology as a tool for both her storytelling and a means for characterization, particularly the tale of Persephone and Hades. If you're unfamiliar don't worry, the book fills you in. With its use, Carter succeeds in crafting a modern rendition of a timeless literary figure by instilling a believable sense of guilt and isolation. If Hades truly did exist, how would he carry himself after such a tragic turn in his life? Aimee Carter is here to answer that question. However, I found the nature of the actual test for ascending to godhood and immortality to be rather underwhelming. I admittedly had led myself to believe the main principle of the test might evaluate Kate's moral judgment and if she'd responsibly use the powers bestowed by becoming a goddess. While I'll avoid spoiling it, the test itself comes into play from behind the scenes and is less about a proper evaluation of moral fiber and more of a trial about personifying an absolute paragon of humility. A little ironic really given the morally ambiguous, and at times sadistic nature of Greek myths. I'm being a little hypocritical by saying that since this isn't meant to be taken as an exact portrayal of these characters, though this was the one aspect of the gods' characterization that irked me a bit. Aside from that one minor grievance, I consider this book to be a real gem. In a sea of romances that miss the mark and oversaturate the market with blood-sucking vampires, The Goddess Test stands apart from the crowd with its use of Greek mythology and a very endearing protagonist that truly tugs on one's heart-strings. There was clearly a great amount of heart and passion put into this book and it definitely shows. Aimee Carter is an excellent author who has portrayed a genre I'm usually indifferent towards in a refreshing new light.

The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter is definitely one of the more unique YA novels out there today. The story has a strong premise centered around the Greek gods we all know and love, slightly reimagined. While the Greek mythology it’s self is a little spotty, the characters are what truly pull the book into an amazing novel. The unseen twists and turns are brilliantly thought thorough and will have you excited for Goddess Interrupted. Although this is her debut novel, she manages to not lose steam and kept me on the edge of my seat start to finish. To start, Kate is a heroine I can definitely sympathize with, an overall very well rounded character. She isn’t a whiner and doesn’t just sort of let life happen to her. Her life is rough, she knows it and she deals with it. Her mom is quite spirited and was amazingly written (I wish I had a mom like her). Henry (aka, Hades), is the ultimate dreamy bad boy/ tortured soul (I mean I though Angel from BtVS was intense). Henry actually somewhat reminded me of Darcy from Pride And Prejudice with how aristocratic almost he was, as the responsibility of his role would crush him if he misspoke. Plus there is the host of other character that make up the wacky Greek God family. The characters just blend beautiful in this book. It will leave you wanting more, which is fortunate as this is just the first in the trilogy. I sincerely recommend picking up The Goddess Test and giving it a shot.

Die letzten vier Jahre hat Kate damit verbracht ihre sterbende Mutter zu pflegen, die an Krebs leidet. Jeder Tag ist ein Geschenk und könnte der letzte gemeinsame Tag sein. Ihr letzter Wunsch ist es, dass Kate sie nach Eden, einem kleinen Ort in Michigan bringt, wo sie geboren wurde und nun auch sterben möchte. Kate hat ihr eigenes Leben voll aufgegeben und außer ihrer Mutter ist nichts wichtig für sie. An ihrem 18. Geburtstag treffen sie in Eden ein. Direkt am ersten Schultag trifft sie viele neue Leute, die ihr Leben beeinflussen: James, ein durchschnittlicher Junge, mit dem sie schnell Freundschaft schließt, der aber eher zur Loser-Fraktion gehört. Dann ist da der Schulschönling Dylan, der direkt Interesse an Kate bekundet und daraufhin bekommt sie Ärger mit der "Königin" der Schule, der schönen Ava, der Freundin von Dylan. Als dessen Interesse anhält, spielt Ava Kate einen Streit mit tödlichen Folgen: Ava stirbt durch einen Unfall. Da kommt ihr der mysteriöse und attraktive Henry zu Hilfe und schlägt ihr einen Deal vor. Sie soll die Geschichte von Persephone studieren und wenn sie zustimmt, Herbst und Winter in Eden Manor, einem herrschaftlichen Anwesen am Rande der Stadt, mit Henry zu verbringen, wird Ava leben. Auf dem Anwesen muss sie feststellen, dass mehr hinter der Sache steckt als gedacht und plötzlich muss sich Kate mit Dingen wie Unsterblichkeit, griechischer Mythologie und Göttern auseinandersetzen. Besteht doch noch eine Möglichkeit für sie, ihre Mutter zu retten? Wenn ich nur nicht die Angewohnheit hätte, ständig über neue Buchreihen zu stolperen, die eben erst den ersten Band veröffentlicht haben. Bei dieser Reihe hier handelt es sich um eine Trilogie, deren zweiter Teil im April nächsten Jahres erscheint; der dritte und letzte Band ist für 2013 angekündigt. Es geht hier um die griechische Mythologie und dieses Mal ist der "Bad Guy" der Held der Geschichte: Hades, der Gott der Unterwelt spielt die Hauptrolle in dieser Geschichte. Da ich das Buch auf den Kindle geladen hatte, bekam ich die Liste mit der Verteilung der Rollen erst im "Abspann" zu lesen und wurde so genauso überrascht wie Kate im Buch. Mir hat dieses Buch sehr gut gefallen. Die Geschichte war unterhaltsam und die griechischen Göttergeschichten waren gut darin eingestrickt. Henry und Kate waren mir auf Anhieb sympathisch; mit Ava und James hatte ich Anlaufschwierigkeiten. Ich bin schon sehr gespannt, wie die Geschichte im nächsten Band weitergesponnen wird. Der Auftakt war jedenfalls schon mal sehr vielversprechend. Fazit: Fans der griechischen Mythologie wird diese Geschichte gefallen. Eine Liebesgeschichte eingepackt in alte Sagen gepaart mit Humor und guten Dialogen. Für mich definitiv eines meiner Highlights in diesem Jahr!

I read this book from start to finish in one sitting and loved it. Not too challenging a read, it had a great storyline with plenty of emotion!

I read this for the first time many many years ago and it is still a book I come back to and enjoy. Great little mythology inspired book although predictable at times.

(Source: Purchased on kindle from amazon.co.uk for only 99p.) Kate is moving to a small village called Eden with her dying mother. Her mother grew up there, and wants to go back there before she dies. Kate however is going to have to start over at the school there, and make new friends, all while trying to cope with her mother's illness and impending death. When Kate first arrives in Eden, she is nearly run off the road by a cow, and then discovers that the house that they have rented has a leaking roof. As if that wasn't bad enough, one of the girls at her new school - Ava, seems to take an instant dislike to her, although Ava ends up the worst off playing a cruel prank on Kate, but accidentally killing herself in the process!! When a man (Henry) approaches Kate as she is trying desperately to revive Ava, and offers to bring her back to life as long as Kate does him a favour, Kate agrees not knowing what the favour is. When she later finds out that the favour turns out to be living with this strange man for 6 months of the year, every year, Kate turns him down, only to find out that Ava is dead the next day. Feeling guilty, Kate seeks Henry out and says that she will accept his proposal, although it is now too late to save Ava. Instead Henry offers to give her mother a little longer to live in exchange for Kate staying with him. There is more than Kate has to learn though when Henry tells her that he is god of the underworld, and that he is looking for a replacement queen. Kate is set to be this replacement, but first she must pass 7 tests. What are these tests? What happens if Kate fails? And what happens if she passes? This book was good overall, and were so many twist and turns I never knew what was coming next, but parts of it irritated me. It's difficult to know where to start with this book! The story changes so much from beginning to end, and even when you get to the end you find out that things that you read at the beginning turn out to be not completely true, and the story is changed all over again! These twists and turns just happened all over the place from beginning to end, and like I said, there were even twists at the end that retwisted the twists at the beginning (seriously). At the 40% mark in this book I was beginning to think that I wasn't going to like this book. Kate just seemed to accept what was going on far too easily, and even though she was told that Henry's 11 previous girlfriends had been murdered, she didn't seem to take the threat to her life seriously at all. She also worried about things that I didn't think should be at the top of her list of priorities, never mind that her mother is dying, she's set to become queen of the underworld, and someone is trying to kill her, no; what's terrible is that she has to attend a ball! At one point I did think that Kate was actually going to find her feet, stand her ground, and stop being quite so sappy and whiney, but that seemed to be a bit of a blip. At this point I also thought that Kate's mother was being a bit selfish. I understood that she was dying, but I didn't think it very fair to make Kate, who was obviously having trouble coming to terms with her mother's impending demise, move to a place in the middle of nowhere, where she had no friends and no support network! As I got further into this book, and the twists kept coming, these above observations did change as the story changed, but I can't say too much without dropping spoilers. I will say that Kate does improve quite a bit before the end of the book, but she is still a little immature. One thing that doesn't change throughout the book though is Kate's inability to say the word `sex'. I mean, she can't even say it; she refers to it as `that'. I thought this was totally unnecessary, and only made Kate seem even more immature and naïve. As for the mythology aspect of this book, I have to say that I am a complete Greek mythology virgin, and have absolutely no idea how well this book stuck to the myths or names of the Gods or anything, so I'm afraid I have to plead complete ignorance here. I liked the storyline, and it made sense, I just honestly have nothing else to compare it to. Overall; I did enjoy this book, although the ending where everything was revealed and we finally had the whole story was definitely the best part of the book. I was pleased that this book had a real ending rather than a cliff-hanger, so that if you didn't like this instalment, you don't have to read the next one. I personally am interested to see where Kate and Henry's story will go from here though. 7.5 out of 10.