For millennia we’ve caught only glimpses of the lives and loves of the gods and goddesses on Olympus. Now Aimée Carter pulls back the curtain on how they became the powerful, petty, loving and dangerous immortals that Kate Winters knows.

Calliope/Hera represented consistency and yet had a husband who never matched her faithfulness…

Ava/Aphrodite was the goddess of love and yet commitment was a totally different deal…

Persephone was urged to marry one man, yet longed for another…

James/Hermes loved to make trouble for others – but never knew true loss before…

Henry/Hades’s solitary existence had grown too wearisome to continue. But meeting Kate Winters gave him new hope…

Five original novellas of love, loss and longing and the will to survive throughout the ages.

I don’t know about you, but I finished reading The Goddess Test really curious to know more about the gods that Aimée Carter introduces to us on the first book of the series. So when I saw that The Goddess Legacy was available at NetGalley I didn’t think twice and requested it for review—even though I have yet to read The Goddess Interrupted.

What I really liked about The Goddess Legacy is that you can actually read it without having read the previous books of the series. If you don’t like minor spoilers than you may want to read The Goddess Test first, but if you’re like me and don’t really care about knowing little details beforehand I think you should actually start reading this series by The Goddess Legacy. This book is a prequel to the series, and it shows us how the gods ended up at the point they are at the beginning of The Goddess Test.

We follow 5 gods as their lives change forever. Hera’s story is as intense as herself, and it shows us a face of Zeus that is completely expected considering the mythology. She wanted power and love—and she ends up alone and prisoner of her own proud. Aphrodite shows herself as a spoiled girl who is used to have everything she wants but needs to face reality and make choices in name of love. We see her grow up, even though at some points all we want to do is slap her on the face for being so immature.

From all the 5 tales the one that captivated me the most was Hades’s. We see both sides of the story—there’s Persephone’s and his, and while I felt pity for her for a while as I was reading hers, I ended up kind of mad at her. She is selfish until the end, even when she says she’s acting like that for other people. Meanwhile, Hades is charming and tries to do his best, for everyone. But he ends up being the saddest of all.

Hermes story is interesting and it explains a lot to me how he behaves on The Goddess Test and The Goddess Hunt—I have read them both, but I haven’t reviewed the second one yet. In fact, he grew on me after reading it, he seems to be the most reasonable of the gods created by Carter.

The Goddess Legacy is a great story for fans of mythology. We learn how the gods end up changing their names and the dynamic between than. Aimée Carter’s narrative involved me again and I’m looking forward to reading more of this series.

Author: Aimée Carter
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre(s): Young Adult, Fantasy
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Publication date: July 31, 2012
Pages: 200
Purchase:

Rating:

My favorite quotes on this book are bellow.

Love is not always enough, as much as we may want it to be.

Forget the sun—the coldest pit in the universe would be warm as long as Hades was there with me.

And I wanted nothing more than for her to turn around and come back to me.
But she’d made up her mind long ago, as had I. That path was gone now, and no matter how badly I ached to be sisters again, circumstances would never allow it. Not anymore.

When I’m with him, I feel alive, not just immortal. And believe me, there’s a difference. It’s easy to be immortal—all you have to do is sit there. But the world passes you by that way, and I don’t see the point of existing for eternity if we don’t feel it.
Being alive, that’s the hard part. That’s when my heart beats, my eyes are open and I see and smell and feel and taste and hear everything. It’s heat, it’s fire, it’s the crash of the waves and the rumble of thunder. It’s an awareness mortals take for granted.

Who wants to exist because someone was in pain?

Any moment, the stranger might open his eyes.
Any moment, my world might change forever. Unless it already has.

Sometimes love is quiet, lingering in the background until you least expect it. But love is always there for you.

Love is an action, not a word.

For me, love isn’t something you only give once, and then it’s gone. Love is everywhere. Love is everything.

The love I want or the love I need.
It isn’t fair.

Zeus would’ve hated it. I loved it instantly.

“Just don’t get us lost.”
“Me, get us lost?” He snorted. “I’m more likely to get us killed.”
“And that’s supposed to boost my confidence in you how?”

Zeus likes to say a lot of things. Most of them aren’t true.

The cliché about time moving in slow motion isn’t a cliché for no reason. I’d lived for thousands of years, but that moment was the first time I’d experienced it firsthand.

But even though I’m still me, you’ve all treated me like scum ever since, and I’m sick of it. I don’t treat any of you that way—except maybe you, Apollo, but only because I’m jealous of your teeth.