Review--Losing Beauty by Johanna Garth

Child abuse, cross-dressing, theft, adultery—people in Persey Campbell’s town have terrible secrets and she is the unfortunate repository for all of them. What she can’t figure out is why everyone is so desperate to tell her their worst secrets

Daniel Hartnett is a lawyer who has it all. People think he’s lucky. What they don’t understand is Daniel has a crap-o-meter that lets him hear the meanings behind other people’s words. He used to think his crap-o-meter was a gift from God. It made him successful. It got him laid. Except now he’d like to meet someone and settle down and he can’t turn his crap-o-meter off. As long as it’s on, there are no surprises, no rush of anticipation and no falling in love.

When Daniel meets Persey he discovers she’s the first girl he’s ever met who is immune to his special talent. The only problem is someone else discovered Persey first and is hell-bent on claiming her as his own. Haden is the kind of the Underworld with a plan to make Persey his immortal queen. What Haden doesn’t plan on is Persey’s unique ability to compel secrets and how far the people who love Persey will go to protect her from the inner darkness that threatens to destroy her soul.

I received this book from the author for review

Johanna Garth's Losing Beauty was quite the interesting tale. As you may know I love Greek mythology so when offered to review this one I took it! And it was pretty good too.

The story starts at the very beginning, Persey is a child and basically we go through her life, there's big time jumps, but the point was to see Persey as a small child and see her powers in the beginning. Haden is also there, he takes on different forms by possessing bodies of people who made deals with him. There's a structure to Haden's ruling of the Underworld and it's pretty simple really, he needs souls. He also can see how a person will die just by looking at them. Except for Persey which is why he suddenly becomes drawn to her.

It was a little odd at first, he's in a grown man's body and Persey is a child, but nothing happens. It just seemed odd. He was never lewd or anything like that. But still when a god feels drawn to a child like that, it's just odd. But again, it wasn't disgusting or inappropriate.

Throughout Persey's life Haden is there every few years in another body, she never knows that he's really there or who he is. He just becomes someone she confines in at times. When she reaches an appropriate age, Haden wants her to be his queen in the Underworld more than ever, but Persey has been living her own life.

There is some romance, firstly Persey is with someone else for a good portion of her "adult time" in the story. Daniel becomes one of the lawyers that hires her at the firm. He has his own special "powers" as we know, but it doesn't seem to work on Persey. Persey is special and everybody wants her. Then Persey's life takes a turn for the worse and Haden is the cause.

Overall the story wasn't too bad. The pacing was a little slow, I was expecting to start seeing the heroine at such a young age and then proceed through high school and what not. What also irked me just a bit was when Haden would see when so-and-so would die. We basically learn whether a character makes it to the end or not. I mean I understand it was his power, but it's like being told the ending of a movie and that someone dies. (**Which one of my friends in high school did to me with Van Helsing! I was sooo mad at him!)

I liked the novel and the storyline. The characters were all good. It was told in multiple third person p.o.v. so we get to "see" a lot of their inner minds which can be good to know their depth. My only problems were when Haden tells you certain characters are going to die and the pacing by a tad. But then again, I see where needing to know Persey's backstory was important. I just felt like maybe it could've been done shorter or in a different way. The cover description made me think the story was going to be about Persey as an adult and not her (nearly) whole life story.

Overall rating 3.5/5 stars--a good read and one that you may want to look into sometime if you love Greek mythology like I do. It was a nice spin to the tale of Persephone and Hades! And there was quite a surprising ending too!