Published: May 25, 2020
Publisher: Scarlett St. Clair
Series: Hades & Persephone #1
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 358 (Hardcover)
My Rating: 2.5/5.0
Synopsis:
Persephone is the Goddess of Spring by title only. The truth is, since she was a little girl, flowers have shriveled at her touch. After moving to New Athens, she hopes to lead an unassuming life disguised as a mortal journalist.
Hades, God of the Dead, has built a gambling empire in the mortal world and his favorite bets are rumored to be impossible.
After a chance encounter with Hades, Persephone finds herself in a contract with the God of the Dead and the terms are impossible: Persephone must create life in the Underworld or lose her freedom forever.
The bet does more than expose Persephone’s failure as a goddess, however. As she struggles to sow the seeds of her freedom, love for the God of the Dead grows—and it’s forbidden.
OKAY, WOW. Fantasy Romance binge continues, but upon further consideration I may increase the rating of some other books I’ve read recently. This one was… well, it was fun and steamy but the main character is an idiot. There wouldn’t be much plot if she would stop being so disagreeable like 100% of the time and if either of the main characters could hold a conversation that didn’t devolve to idiocy.
Anyway, a summary. This is a Hades and Persephone retelling set in a modern day Greece where the gods have returned to Earth to walk among mortals. Mortals celebrate them and fawn over them like celebrities because, well, they are. Persephone is trying to escape from under her mother Demeter’s thumb and is pretending to be a mortal and attending university. She’s got a sweet journalism internship, an apartment with her best friend, and life is going pretty well. Until she ends up unintentionally making a bargain with Hades in one of his gambling dens. She must bring life to the Underworld and if she can’t she gets trapped there for half the year.
The plot is largely minor struggles, with her bargain with Hades taking up the lead. She writes an article on how awful Hades is because of these bargains he makes with mortals and has a nasty experience with a co-worker. She also ends up dealing with her mother, who just reminds her that she’s useless without her borrowed magic. Because of course Persephone can’t just be a normal goddess – her powers are basically non-existent. It ultimately culminates with Persephone and Hades absolutely mad about one another and also frequently mad at one another.
Like I said, if they could have a mature conversation there wouldn’t be so many issues. Instead Hades is compulsively secretive and shady, playing up the broody Lord of the Dead aspect very well. Persephone is even worse, wildly jumping to conclusions like it’s an Olympic sport and refusing to listen to a whole sentence from Hades so that he might explain anything. In short, it’s not an example of a healthy relationship but MAN IT’S SO FUN TO READ.
That’s literally the whole reason this book received the rating it did. Because it was unputdownable and ridiculously entertaining, also, there are some fantastic side characters. Hermes and Hecate and Lexa are brilliant and are by far my favorite characters. The worldbuilding seems really cool, but at this point it was a little shallow. I have tons of criticism about the book, clearly, but it was entertaining, had me emotionally invested in the characters and then I bought the second book and started reading right away.
*Forgive me if I’ve included any books from the second book here – I read them consecutively and they sort of blurred together a bit*
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