Summary:

Sixteen-year-old cupid-in-training Kali is in an Olympus-sized mountain of trouble. Rule number one in arrow-toting matchmaking: don’t stick yourself. But accidents happen, and Kali instantly falls hard for her indie rock, bass-playing target, Benicio.

The God of Love is going to kill her. Even if he is her dad.

Being the daughter of Eros isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For one thing, a girl can get jaded when her parents have the most beautiful and fatalistic love story in history. For another, immortality royally sucks when the Oracle condemns you to eternity in the wrong profession. Do the Gods care that Kali wants to ditch the love stuff and be a muse?

Nope.

To reclaim her heart and her destiny, Kali is left with no choice but to defy the Gods, tempt the Fates, date the mortal love-of-her-life, and hope she doesn’t lose her best friend, Hector, in the process.

Goodreads

Thoughts:

When I saw this book on netgalley I couldn’t help but request it because it seemed like a very ‘me’ type book. It’s got Greek gods, it’s YA, and it’s romance. Also, it seemed really fun with things taking place in the modern world. And, here’s the thing, I did enjoy this book, but I also couldn’t help but feel like something was missing.

This book takes place in a world where the Greek gods still exist, living in a sort of hidden dimension away from humans but still doing their assigned jobs in the human world. Also, the gods have continued to have their ranks grow as generations of new gods and goddesses are born and assigned to go into different roles after attending a sort of god training school. Kali is the youngest daughter of Eros and Psyche and is a young love goddess (matchmaker) in training, but she really wants to be a Muse and inspire humans in the arts. She’s not a great cupid and keeps messing up her matches, much to everyone’s despair (especially her parents). She has a little bit of a crush on a high school boy who happens to be a in a rock band, but she really messes up when she accidentally pricks herself with her own arrow making herself fall instantly in love with him. She goes to live on Earth to be near him and try to figure out a way to break the magic love spell. She’s accompanied by a few other gods and goddesses in the mortal world and hijinks ensue.

One of my friends took one look at the blurb and told me what he thought was going to happen and I have to say he was spot on. One of the major parts of the story here–who is Kali going to end up with–is extremely predictable. Yes, it’s a fun book but I also knew a lot of how it would go because it’s how so many of these stories go. There weren’t many surprises. Even most of the side plots were easy to see unfolding in a certain pattern. And you know, that’s perfectly fine as long as something else elevates the story–great prose, stand out characters, awesome setting, etc. But everything about this felt incredibly average. The characters were good but I feel like I’ve seen all of them before in other stories–they’re not so much characters as caricatures at this point. I was hoping for something a little more original–especially with such a fun premise.

I was torn on how modern the gods were. On the one hand, I don’t expect gods to remain as they were thousands of years ago, especially all the kids from the new generation of gods. Of course they’re going to be modern. But they also didn’t feel very god-like? They felt too much like normal kids. I would have liked them to feel a bit more other-worldly. Gods are not humans and although they may mimic humans sometimes, they’re capricious when it comes to humanity. I wish I would have felt some of that. Otherwise they’re just magic/super-powered humans.

One of the things that I did really love about the book is that it’s not just about who Kali ends up with. The book is about Kali learning to love herself and decide what she wants her future to be. I always think that’s a worthy theme to explore, especially in YA fiction, especially for things like this that feel they skew to the younger side of YA.

Overall, I still had fun reading this because I didn’t really take it that seriously, it’s a quick and light read, so if that’s what you want then maybe check this out. But if you’re looking for something a bit more elevated or original I don’t know if this will be a great fit for you. 3 stars.

Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for providing a copy for review. This did not affect the content of my review in any way.