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Thanks to NetGalley and Midnight Ink for providing an e-Arc in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis: When Angie’s big fat Greek wedding goes bust, her grandmother sends her on a trip to Greece with the instruction to set sail on a mysterious fishing boat that will take her to an uncharted island. Waiting for her on the dock is Milos, who’s charming and handsome and confesses he’s been crushing on her for years, even though he’s never met her. He also tells her he’s a descendant of the original Gods of Olympus, who are plotting their return to power.
Before she can say “Oh My God,” Angie is flying on a winged horse alongside Milos and finding love in his arms. But there’s one little hitch: Milos’s elders are forcing him to marry a malevolent goddess named Electra to fulfill their plan. If Angie is to have any hope of hanging onto Milos, she’ll have to battle monsters, both reptilian and lipsticked; uncover secrets about her past; and go toe-to-toe with Zeus himself, whose recipe for world domination doesn’t call for a sassy girl from the outer boroughs.
I went into this fully expecting to love it based on the premise. It has everything I love: Greek Mythology, humor, romance, and a sassy heroine. Sadly, by the time I was 50 pages in I was completely disenchanted and I had to force myself to slog through to the finish. The book tries hard to be funny and clever, perhaps too hard. Instead it comes across as silly, overblown and trite. I couldn’t relate to Angie in any way. She’s in her late 20s and feeling under pressure from her Greek-American family to get married. While I could emphasize with that aspect, everything else was just all over the place with her. She becomes a runaway bride, goes on this trip to Greece, and instantly falls in love with Milos. I think I may have mentioned my distaste of insta-love in previous reviews. Ugh. And Milos goes from a creepy stalker guy to a Greek God who is kind of a fumbling idiot. The author for the most part doesn’t bring anything new to the Greek echelon: Zeus is arrogant, Hades is evil, Ares is a bully, Aphrodite is slutty, etc. The only character that I actually liked in the entire book was Hera. Here, the author takes a departure from the usual portrayals of her as a jealous, vengeful, psychopathic goddess. In this story she comes across as much more compassionate and you can see why she’s the goddess of women and marriage. But alas, not even the Queen of the Gods could save this book. Neither could the world-building which I admit was beautifully detailed. With a plus-sized heroine this should have been a spectacular female empowerment novel. Maybe the complete disconnect I felt was because the author is a man. Or maybe I was just in a cranky mood. The book has received many 4-5 star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, so I’m going to back away from saying I don’t recommend this. While this wasn’t for me, if you like stories based on Greek Mythology you may like this, so give it a try.
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