The Goddess Test, by Aimee Carter

The Goddess Test, by Aimee Carter (Harlequin Teen, YA, 2011) is, essentially, Hades and Persephone meets Beauty and the Beast (the first Robin McKinley version, which is my personal B. and B. benchmark!). Since I like both, and since Carter's spin on the story was pleasingly interesting, I found it a nice read, although one that I enjoyed more while I was actually reading it, than while thinking about it afterward.

The Persephone/Beauty character in this case is a teenaged girl named Kate. Her mom wanted to come back to her home town to live the last little while she has left before she dies....and so Kate has to try to be cheerful about their dingy new house and starting a new school. When, of course, cheerful is the last thing Kate feels, in as much as her beloved mother won't be there much longer.

But! When Kate is lured onto the grounds of a mysterious estate by high school queen bee Ava, she meets a strange, dark, brooding man named Henry, who seems to have power over death itself. And so Kate makes a bargain with Henry. He will keep her mother alive while she spends the winter with him in his sumptuous manor with rooms full of clothes etc., beautiful gardens, horse, and lots of tasty snacks. There are two catches. She must marry him, and she must try to pass the seven tests that no other girl ever lived long enough to complete.

If she wins, she's a goddess. If she looses (but manages to stay alive), she's an ordinary girl again, and Henry is the one who fades away...

Although I did find this a pleasantly diverting read, once I hit the end, and started thinking about it, it fell apart. For one thing, I never quite suspended my disbelief about the romance side of things--Kate sort of passively fell into her situation, and her one real emotional preoccupation (understandably) is with her mother. More than that, the whole being married to the god of the dead who you really don't know all that well, who makes squirrely bargains with you without clearly explaining the consequences, and who's still in love with his dead ex-wife (Persephone), is in general not something I'd like for my own daughter (if I had one). I wasn't exactly rooting for it to end up all rosy and happy, and indeed, Carter doesn't insult the reader by making it a happy ever after ending (which I appreciated).

My main complaint is that the Greek gods and goddess play parts in the story, but they are Greek gods and goddesses seen through a blurry lens. If you are more than passingly familiar with Greek mythology, you may well find this annoying; I was profoundly disappointed. For instance, Carter took tremendous liberties with Hera. Hera's trademark characteristic is marital loyalty, which goes out the window here in a way that almost spoiled the whole book for me. She also takes liberties with the underworld, which I can sympathize with--it must have been tricky, but the result is a mishmash of various religions with the underworld of Greek myth and it never quite make sense. (I was also thrown by the fact that I got to the end of the book, encountered a character named Walter who I presume must have been mentioned, but of whom I had No Memory....but that could easily be my fault and not the author's. If someone can tell me who Walter is, I'd appreciate it--I flipped through the book, but didn't see him...).

I'd did enjoy this one, and I'll be reading the next one (Goddess Interrupted, coming out at the end of March), but since I am assuming the sphere of action is going to move beyond the manor house of Hades, and the other gods will have more page time, I'm kind of doubtful....will I be even more profoundly irked by Carter's reimagining of the myths?