Reviews by Gill-Marie Stewart
PERSEPHONE by Kaitlin Bevis
Combining elements of Greek gods and myths with present day characters isn’t 
exactly a new idea, but when it’s done well – as here – it’s great fun. And you feel you’re learning something whilst enjoying yourself!
The character of Persephone, initially ignorant of her powers, is well-drawn and develops nicely as her knowledge (and power) grows. Hades is lovely! Great, strong, dark male character with definite potential to continue their relationship in future books. The secondary characters in the Underworld are better developed than those in the present day, possibly because they are in the story more.
I would have been happy with this book as a contemporary, the present-day scenes are a great read, but it was clearly always Bevis’s aim to take the reader into the alternative reality of the Greek gods and their Underworld. She spends quite a lot of time describing the Underworld and how things work here, and although it is interesting I felt she overdid it and that this was a weaker aspect of the book.
This is a book that improves as it goes along. At first I would have given it less than 4 Piranhas, in fact I might not have carried on reading if I hadn’t read Bevis’s short story ‘Melissa’ and enjoyed it so much (see below). However, by the middle of the book the pace had picked up and I couldn’t stop reading. Despite the uneven feel of the story, I’m already looking forward to reading more books in this series.
THAT MOMENT WHEN : MELISSA – short story by Kaitlin Bevis
I loved this short story, both the sarcastic tone and the non-stop action. We meet Melissa, priestess of the missing goddess Persephone, and see the world from her point of view. Being a priestess isn’t all it’s made out to be, and it’s great to learn Melissa’s thoughts. It was reading this story that initially drew me to the novel Persephone (see above).
Gill-Marie writes YA mystery/romances as Gill-Marie Stewart. As Gilly Stewart she also writes women’s contemporary fiction. The first book in her YA series about George and Finn is Music and Lies (try out the first chapter here).
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