Review--Persephone by Kaitlin Bevis

Daughters of Zeus, Book One

One day Persephone is an ordinary high school senior working at her mom’s flower shop in Athens, Georgia. The next she’s fighting off Boreas, the brutal god of Winter, and learning that she’s a bonafide goddess—a rare daughter of the now-dead Zeus. Her goddess mom whisks her off to the Underworld to hide until Spring.

There she finds herself under the protection of handsome Hades, the god of the dead, and she’s automatically married to him. It’s the only way he can keep her safe. Older, wiser, and far more powerful than she, Hades isn’t interested in becoming her lover, at least not anytime soon. But every time he rescues her from another of Zeus’s schemes, they fall in love a little more. Will Hades ever admit his feelings for her?

Can she escape the grasp of her powerful dad’s minions? The Underworld is a very cool place, but is it worth giving up her life in the realm of the living? Her goddess powers are developing some serious, kick-butt potential. She’s going to fight back. 

I received this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, I was in no way compensated for this review.

I had been meaning to read Kaitlin Bevis’s Persephone for ages and when I saw it on Netgalley I knew this was my chance! I have a love for Greek mythology, stemmed from the roots of my love for fairy tales I guess! And this read has a lot of Greek mythology pieces in it!

Persephone’s life gets turned upside down the day a strange customer comes into her mom’s flower shop. He seemed like a nice guy, a little forward, but then suddenly things take a scary turn and Persephone learns he’s not at all what he seems. Then her mother proceeds to tell her that she is Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture and she is her daughter, the daughter of Zeus. Apparently Zeus didn’t go far to get around in his days. But there is another thing to know, nearly all the gods are dead. Too much time had passed where no one believe in them anymore and without that belief, they lost power and died.

But that isn’t even the beginning of Persephone’s problems.  She starts to think her mother is a bit crazy at first, but then she learns why this scary guy was after her. He was working for Boreas, the god of Winter and, Boreas wants Persephone for himself. It’s right before she’s attacked by Boreas that Hades rushes in and saves the day. He brings Persephone to the Underworld where she’ll remain from the Winter Solstice to the Spring Equinox.

What I found interesting about this story was that despite having our Greek gods and goddesses, so myths just straight up don’t exist! Like the Persephone and Hades myth, though I can kinda see why that one doesn’t exist, for it’s our story taking place in the her and now. But the Orpheus myth doesn’t exist either, for he and Eurydice play a part in this story. And then their myth becomes apart of the story! It was weird, yet it totally worked for the story! I just felt unbalanced because I no longer knew which myths were fact or not in this world. That was probably one of my only complaints about the story. I still understand why some myths aren’t mentioned as being such, but then you see one or two act out and you see the reasons, but it still left me a bit discombobulated. I can’t remember all the myths, so it’s not like I am questioning all of them now, but it still leaves you to wonder what myths are really myths in the story or are events that basically never happened!

The story, while good, did have a few moments where the pacing just slowed down. It wasn’t unbearable, but you are left wondering what’s the game plan here? Besides trying to protect Persephone from Boreas, what does Boreas want with her? We do learn a little bit about that, but it’s touched on so vaguely it does leave you wondering more about Boreas’ motivation. Answers do come though, which makes for interesting reading! There was quite the shocking revelations towards the end and now I find myself needing the next book in the series!

Onto the romance in the story! I think it’s safe to say that for the most part we all know the myth of Persephone and Hades, as it’s the most popular myth to be taken to modernization in YA books. Hades fell in love with Persephone and makes her his queen. Then she’s to spend half the year with him and the other half with her mother. We see bits of this playing out already, but there was no romance right away. And to be honest, at first, I wasn’t sure how old Hades was meant to be. Persephone is almost seventeen, so is Hades like eighteen? Seventeen? It’s never clearly said, nor was Hades described to look more teenager than young adult, but there was a moment where Persephone was speculating on that herself and came up with twenty or twenty-five. So for my peace of mind, I’d like to say more twenty, just so it’s not having a slightly creepy factor to things.

But as I was saying, there was no insta-love per se. Hades was friendly enough, for sure. He and Persephone become friends rather quickly after the initial OMG factors. Then soon enough, we see Persephone falling in love and while Hades is a complicated guy, there were tiny hints to see that he felt the same way too.

I also enjoyed seeing other familiar faces like Cassandra, who becomes a quick friend to Persephone and Helen of Troy was there too. She was rather sweet as well. 

The ending of this one was pretty shocking. As I said there were lots of reveals that leave you reeling and in need of the next book which I will likely have to add to my Mount TBR of Doom soon as well! For fans of Greek mythology and their “re-vamped” storytellings, I highly recommend this one! While it wasn’t a perfect read, it was still a good one with plenty of enjoyable moments!

Overall Rating 3.5/5 stars