Trust me, when we fuck, you'll remember." WHEN? "Your arrogance is alarming." His eyes flashed. I mean that conversations/sequences of events don't seem to follow any sort of logical pattern. I don't just mean that characters make illogical choices (although there's plenty of that, too). The only time he makes an effort to alter her perception of him is when he starts a rehab charity for mortals, at Persephone's suggestion, but-as mentioned-she only takes that as an offense. He just doesn't seem willing to do much to change it. If he truly didn't care about anyone's opinion this would make sense, but he tells Persephone more than once that HER opinion matters. He allows Persephone to continue thinking ill of him, then gets irritated when she thinks ill of him. At worst he stays silent, and at best he'll say something along the lines of, "It's not like that," but doesn't follow up with an explanation. You might recognize that as something that's certainly difficult, but not impossible.) Anyway, Persephone buys into this reputation and often accuses him of this and worse, and Hades hardly ever stands up for himself. (His terms include things like challenging alcoholics to give up drinking. So Hades has a reputation as a cold, heartless, ruthless tyrant who challenges mortals to games of cards in order to trick them into "impossible" contracts. If she was, as the story implies, born 20-some actual years ago, how has spring happened before her birth? Since she can't make her powers manifest, how does spring happen at all? Who gave her the title of "goddess of spring", if a) none of the other gods knew about her (as is implied) and b) she shows no gift for anything springtime-related? 3. Persephone is, nominally, the goddess of spring. Lastly, she spends a lot of time thinking Independent Woman thoughts, but all of those seem to fly out the window the second she gets in the presence of Hades and his magical dick. He'll tell her, "I don't have full control over my contracts and have to consult with the Fates", and she'll continue to berate him for his "unfair" contracts that "ask the impossible". She also just plain doesn't listen when Hades speaks (when he bothers to explain himself at all, see below). If she's so eager to get out from under her mother's thumb, and her mother hates and mistrusts Hades, you'd think Persephone would take any and every opportunity to see the best in him, specifically to spite her mother. She tells him he should send struggling mortals to rehab? He does so, and she accuses him of doing it to "make fun of" her. Her motivations are all over the place: does she want adventure, a life outside her mother's grasp? Does she want passion and/or love (two things that are alternately conflated and differentiated, as the situation dictates)? Does she want to trust Hades and challenge her preconceived notions of him? Or does she want those notions confirmed, despite his words and actions? She seems ready to believe the worst of Hades at all times, no matter what he does. Persephone barely functions as a protagonist, let alone a heroine. The only way to properly address my feelings about this book is to organize things in a list, so here we go: 1. A modern retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth? Great! Then I started the audiobook and it all went downhill from there. I was excited to read "A Touch of Darkness" based on the synopsis I was given. Some people really will romanticize anything, huh?
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