Sweet Trouble

Rants, raves, book reviews and one girl's thoughts on life, the universe and everything.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

The Greek Gods of myth are alive and well and living in London as the world's most dysfunctional family in one extraordinary, dilapidated house. Their powers are waning after millions of years and it looks like death is upon them until a bizarre set of circumstances sends a modern day mortal hero on a quest to the underworld to save them all. Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?

It gets better: Aphrodite works as a sex phone provider, Artemis is a professional dog walker and Apollo (with a little help from Cupid's arrow) falls in love with a cleaning lady. The cleaning lady loves a desk jockey reminiscent of the 40 Year Old Virgen and their idea of a hot date is a game of Scrabble on an iPhone...

Sadly, as cute as the premise of the book is, the final product just wasn't as appealing to read as it should have been. Is it meant to be a humor novel? If so it wasn't funny enough. Is it a romance? There isn't quite enough heart. All in all the novel felt like a promising screenplay: good enough to receive a green light but seriously in need of tweaking and fleshing out.

For a first novel this is still a great debut and I will be curious to see future offerings by this writer. Like her debut book, Phillips shows promise.

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