Review - The Goddess Test

The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter
Paperback, 293 pages
Published April 19th 2011 by Harlequin
Mythology/Fantasy

Rating: 1 (out of 5)
Mild spoilers

The Goddess Test is a take on the story of Hades and Persephone. Kate Winters moves from New York to Eden, Michigan with her mother, who is close to dying from cancer. Kate is not interested in making friends, but she promises her mother she’ll go to a party one night with a girl from school. After a strange turn of events, she watches as the girl dies in front of her and a stranger named Henry brings her back to life. She is then offered the chance to have her mother kept alive – if she agrees to stay with Henry for 6 months every year for the rest of her life and attempt to pass 7 tests to become a goddess. Every girl who attempted before her ended up dead.


I was really excited to start this book. The storyline sounded seriously awesome. I’m not usually much for mythology, but the promise of 7 exciting, life-threatening tests got me to read it anyway. But once I started reading, I discovered some problems that kept me from enjoying it.

First, Kate becomes friends with Ava instantly. Kate is not a very social girl, whereas Ava is a popular cheerleader. The first time they meet, Ava is all but threatening Kate to stay away from her boyfriend, then claims to be taking her to a party only to abandon her alone in the woods. The next day, they’re best friends. I found that pretty hard to believe, regardless of the fact that they became friends after Kate watched Ava die and be brought back to life. Ava does not seem the type of girl to become friends with someone like Kate so quickly, no matter what.

Second, because of his style of speech, I couldn’t picture Henry as the 22-year old he was supposed to look like. Well, I could, as long as he wasn’t speaking. The moment he had any dialogue, I was picturing a 40-year old man. It made the love scenes very creepy!

Third, the tests. The tests weren’t remotely exciting or interesting. I was expecting tests that would involve physical challenges and be potentially life threatening. I won’t spoil what they actually were, but she didn’t even know when they were happening, and they only tested her character. The only “excitement” was teenage drama inside the manor. And the way the girls before her died had nothing to do with the tests.

Fourth, I thought it was kind of lame that I managed to guess all the most important “surprises” that were revealed at the end. For some people that’s no big deal, but I’m usually lucky to even guess one thing, let alone all of them. To me, the foreshadowing was fairly obvious, and at times she made it simple to use the process of elimination to figure out who was going to be who in the end, since there were so few characters.

Basically, I was pretty disappointed. The book I was so excited to read turned out to be nothing more than high school drama set in a marvelous manor with transparent characters whose intentions were clear from the start. No matter how much Brittany talks it up, I don’t think I’ll be reading the sequel.