There are many theories about how Hades married Persephone. About how he fell in love with her and kidnapped her to the Underworld. This story of The God of the Dead and Goddess of Spring has been reconstructed by Scarlett St. Clair into a three book series and the interesting part about it is that the story is set in the modern world. As much as I love reading about Greek Mythology, this one was such a massive disappointment because Persephone herself wasn’t portrayed correctly.

I’ve read only two books and later decided that I will not be touching the final part. The first two books explores Persephone and Hades’s relationship from the time they meet. Their relationship, contrary to the one in history is full of love and consent. Since it is set in a modern world, we see mortals living side by side with the Gods. Then there are nymphs and Olympians and everything that makes for a good Greek mythology retelling. But the major downfall of this book is Persephone herself. Rather than coming off as a Goddess who is struggling to find her footing in the world, she was often portrayed as a teenager who threw around tantrums, making reckless decisions without thinking about anyone else.

I couldn’t connect with her and started to feel frustrated about her character development arch because I failed to see how a grown woman can have such a terrible time dealing with her emotions. Throughout the book, she was insecure about Hades’s past relationships, about any women who even remotely spoke to him. The second book was so bad that I had the urge to fling it across the wall because nothing made sense to me. Persephone wasn’t meant to be stupid, arrogant, indecisive and extremely entitled. And when the two Gods kept fighting mindlessly, rather than having a conversation, they always resolved it with sex. There’s a lot of smut in the book and by the time I finished the second book, I was exhausted by all the unnecessary drama.

I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who takes Greek mythology seriously. I cannot overlook such important flaws concerning a protagonist which is why even though the romance was appealing to a point, this didn’t work for me at all.