Sunday, January 03, 2010

Book Review: Oh. My. Gods.

Oh. My. Gods.
by Tera Lynn Childs

One of my coworkers has this on hold so I had to sit down and plow through it last night lest I wrack up more overdue fines. I'd been meaning to read this for somet ime, it's come home with me at least twice, been consigned to the library basket, and wistfully waited for me.

Short version of the plot: Just before her senior year of high school, Phoebe's widowed mother remarries after a shockingly short courtship and hauls her to her new husbands home on a small Greek island. Stepdad is the headmaster of a small exclusive school where everyone is descended from the Greek Gods. So now instead of just the usual trials and tribulations of high school, she's facing senior year with the major disadvantage of simply being a normal human.

The book is a nice piece of escape fantasy and has the added advantage of turning things that sound like a dream come true on their head. Moving halfway around the world to a beautiful Greek island? NOOOOOOO Being surrounded by incredibly gorgeous descendants of Gods? BAD Having the super hot guy paired with you as your running partner? extra horrible

The plot is light and fluffy and slightly predictable. The evil stepsister was a nice, classic fairytale touch. What I found most believable were Phoebe's interactions with her mother. Still mourning her father, ripped with almost no notice from everything she's grown up with, she's angry, hurt, and frustrated. Lashing out at her mother is a perfectly understandable and normal response. Phoebe's irritation at her therapist mother's attempts to "therapy" her through these major changes is incredibly realistic and is the best dialog in the book. While the other relationships in the text seem a little too convenient or contrived or happy ending--I think most girls could identify the well-scripted mother daughter relationship.

And the final revenge on the stepsister wasn't bad either...

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