Review: Persephone, by Kaitlin Bevis

Title: Persephone (Daughters of Persephone #1)
Author: Kaitlin Bevis
Genre: Mythology
Pub. Date: July 6, 2012

There are worse things than death, worse people too.

The “talk” was bad enough, but how many teens get told that they’re a goddess? When her mom tells her, Persephone is sure her mother has lost her mind. It isn’t until Boreas, the god of winter, tries to abduct her that she realizes her mother was telling the truth. Hades rescues her, and in order to safely bring Persephone to the Underworld he marks her as his bride. But Boreas will stop at nothing to get Persephone. Despite her growing feelings for Hades, Persephone wants to return to the living realm. Persephone must find a way to defeat Boreas and reclaim her life. -Goodreads

It seems like I've been constantly let-down with all the attempts of Greek mythology retellings. Namely, The Goddess Test series, Everbound, and now, Persphone.

I'm not exactly sure what made me dislike this book. It was either the stupidly simple plot, the characters, or even the absence of anything remotely interesting. It was likely a combination of the above, and along with the mediocre writing, leading to my disliking of this book.

Generally, it never really felt like anything was at stake. Ya, Persephone successfully kills the bad guy, but this was fairly easy, when I was expecting, based on the characters' explanations, a difficult and life-threatening task.

The fact that everything was predictable as heck also caused me to not take this book seriously.

The writing was atrocious at worst, mediocre at best. Let's take a few examples, shall we?

"She rolled her eyes to show her opinion of that particular dieting method."

Well, DUH, if you roll your eyes, OBVIOUSLY you're showing your opinion.

"I peered past her out the window, grinning so she knew I was joking."

The second parts of those sentences were merely unnecessary and annoying and were just one of those DUH moments. The book was full of these. I found myself making this face quite a bit while reading Persephone:

Hades was... Bleh. A disgrace to Greek mythology and all the cool gods we expect from it. The protagonist, Persephone, was naive and stupid and I never found myself sympathizing with her.

Why is this book appealing to most? I've no idea. I certainly found it very unappealing. Excuse me while I go diligently search for an entertaining Greek mythology book.

If you are looking for a good book on Greek myth, go read some of Rick Riordan's books. Don't make the same mistake I made.

2 Stars