**REVIEW** The Goddess Legacy by Aimee Carter

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 constancy 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 a new hope….

   This book was such a pleasant surprise.  I love Aimée Carter's Goddess Test series but this instalment blew me away.  The depth and emotion that she has given her characters shines through and shows just how much thought she has put into them.  This allows and encourages you to connect more with that characters that we have grown to love.  In my case the characters I have grown to love and dislike.  One of these stories swayed my opinion on a character I wasn't so fond of but another my opinion stands: I still do not like her.  Everyone in this book has their own history and their own reasons for what they do and this gives them their own personality and gives you a feel for each of them.  Every new story bring a new character and a new voice.

  Calliope/Hera is where we start and really reading this there was a lot more to her than I knew.  To be honest I am still not very fond of her but I understand her actions a lot more now than I did before I read her story.  She holds a lot of anger against many of the other Gods & Goddess's and she resents Kate to no end but there is also reason enough behind that.  However this does not excuse her actions by any means and I did find myself thinking at times that she needed to be stronger and accept the decisions she made, right or wrong they were hers.

  I'm not going to go in order and move to the one character that drove me nuts in the book and continued on doing so in this one.  Persephone.  Plain and simple I do not like her.  This short made me dislike her further.  I have nothing against wanting to choose your own way but Persephone is selfish and behaves like a spoiled child that has been told no.  Truth be told in other renditions of her story I never felt disliked her, I was more impartial to her.  I get that she never made the choice to be with Henry/Hades but I also didn't feel that she ever gave him a chance either.  They only time she would even give something a shot was when it was something she wanted and even then it seemed like a half hearted attempt.  Despite all that I get her story and understand her wanting out but can not condone the fact that she was unwilling to think of anyone outside of herself.

  The Goddess of love Ava/Aphrodite was an interesting one for me.  She strikes me as a teenager now.  Constantly positive that she knows what she wants only to change her mind.  Not that I fault her it is simply who she is.  She learns many lessons and really comes into her own in this short.  She learns the difference between wanting something and needing something.  Not that she always gets it but she learns that she can be happy while getting what she wants.

  James/Hermes story kind of pulled at my heart.   There was many moments that could make you smile and think "typical James" but there was also much loss.  Reading this actually reminded me as to why I loved James so much because lets face it he wasn't as awesome in Goddess Interrupted as he was in The Goddess Test.  He was the one that was willing to step outside of the box and try to learn more about us humans that ultimately are the reason for their existence.  When he does this he learns about true love and true loss.

  My most anticipated chapter of this story was Henry/Hades.  I just knew it was going to be both painful and beautiful at the same time.  To go through all he did with Persephone and then all the girls that followed her and ultimately why he decided to just fade.  As heart breaking as it is, I totally understood why and I wanted to fight for him but I think after that many years of loss it would be hard to fight it all.  

  Basically this novel just reinforced my previous feeling for most characters.  Some feeling became more intense but they all remained in the same area in my books.  However my knowledge and understanding of why everyone is the way they are and what got them to that point is much more clear now than it was before.  This is a easy and quick read that you just shouldn't miss.  If you haven't started the Goddess Test series you can still pick this one up and learn to love it without feeling lost.

Quotes & Stuff to Love

Calliope

"I will prove you wrong someday," I snarled.  "And when that day comes, you will be cast out and fed to the wolves.  Do not say I didn't warn you."

It was cold fury now, tucked deep away inside me, waiting for the day I could finally release it once more. And I would. 

 Persephone

"You have no choice in the matter," said Zeus. "You are Queen of the Underworld now, and that is not a crown you can give up."

  But it wasn't him.  It was the feeling of being suffocated, smothered, burned out before I had the chance to live.

Aphrodite

"This is my life, not yours.  One son's as good as the other to you anyway, so why don't you just let me choose Ares?  Hera will still be angry."

I swallow.  It seems impossible, but maybe he does understand.  Maybe that's the difference between him and Ares.

Hermes 

Across from me, Hades hissed, but he said nothing.  Coward.  If he had something to say to me, he should've said it to my face.

I wouldn't go down without a fight, though.  Not now, not ever, which meant I had one option in the next twenty-four hours: prove Zeus wrong, no matter how impossible.

Hades

Fury rose up inside of him and threatened to bubble over, but when he looked at her and saw compassion in her eyes his anger drained away.

But there was something about her, something he couldn't describe- something so fundamentally different from her sister that in the space of a single heartbeat, Persephone faded from his mind completely.