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A review by sleepydoe
The Goddess Twins by Yodassa Williams
1.0
The Goddess Twins is a great example of a book that has a super interesting premise, but fails at the execution of said premise.
The story is about two sisters Arden and Aurora who are goddesses belonging to a family full of goddesses, but they don't know that yet. Their mom gets kidnapped out of London, so these two idiots fly to the little city across the pond to go rescue her. They get accosted by their family at the airport and then proceed to learn the truth about their family and start concocting a plan to rescue their mom. There's also this grandfather character who thinks women are stupid and he's the guy who has kidnapped the mom so he can steal all their powers and be the all powerful alpha male that he knows he is.
I'll tell you what this book had going for it - the whole goddesses premise. Even the mysoginistic asshole who wants to murder them for powers is a great starting point for conflict. But you need to be subtle in how to get your message across. And there was none of that nonsense in this book, no sir. If there's a thing you needed to know, you got told it without subtlety to the point where it felt like someone was slapping you in the face.
The simple-ish story wasn't my biggest problem with this, however. However a plot is going, I truly believe that good writing and good character work can salvage the book. This one, sadly, had neither going for it.
The writing style was clunky and inconsistent. There were all these weird descriptions when the characters find out about their family history. It was like that thug notes guy telling you about Gods and Fates and what not, except it felt super forced and like a very bad attempt at, you know, having a Percy Jackson-esque voice that failed miserably. The dialogue and descriptions were also super odd. I guess the two narrators - the twins - did have distinct voices but I attribute that more to the fact they had the one-dimensional personalities of minions than anything else.
Speaking of the twins, THE CHARACTER WORK HERE WAS SO BAD I WANTED TO CRY!!! The only person I could even remotely stand was Arden. Everyone else was INSUFFERABLE! Aurora is a psychotic bitch who has so many mood swings that I had whiplash trying to keep up with her! Arden just feels sorry for herself for no reason and is supposed to be this meek, shy introverted bookworm or some shit. And those fucking cousins. I swear, if I ever see someone like Lilo irl, I will go to prison because I will murder them in under five seconds and that's a fact. The villains were also such cartoon-ish evil because they are evil villains and the good guys weren't that good tbh. Basically, this character work left much to be desired and desire, I did.
Also ALSO ALSO there was this weirdass romance subplot that happened for five pages in the beginning and end, and like, it was so forced and bad?? You think insta-love is pushing it?? This is some OTHER LEVEL, okay! This is psychic-Insta-love. Where they don't even know each others names, but the guy has been dreaming about her so he straight goes to suck face five seconds after he sees her irl. And it's just like… KMN PLS I CANT HANDLE THIS CRIGNE.
The story ends in a very predictable manner and there's no casualties and tbh, it all goes so well that the stakes just feel manufactured. Which they were, let's be honest.
All in all, did not enjoy it. Would not recommend. Can't believe I actually sat reading the whole thing instead of DNFing at 10% when I FELT like this is how it would go. I'm actually super disappointed because I really was intrigued by the premise and the cover and thought this was going to be a fun read but oofé. Here we are, I guess.
The story is about two sisters Arden and Aurora who are goddesses belonging to a family full of goddesses, but they don't know that yet. Their mom gets kidnapped out of London, so these two idiots fly to the little city across the pond to go rescue her. They get accosted by their family at the airport and then proceed to learn the truth about their family and start concocting a plan to rescue their mom. There's also this grandfather character who thinks women are stupid and he's the guy who has kidnapped the mom so he can steal all their powers and be the all powerful alpha male that he knows he is.
I'll tell you what this book had going for it - the whole goddesses premise. Even the mysoginistic asshole who wants to murder them for powers is a great starting point for conflict. But you need to be subtle in how to get your message across. And there was none of that nonsense in this book, no sir. If there's a thing you needed to know, you got told it without subtlety to the point where it felt like someone was slapping you in the face.
The simple-ish story wasn't my biggest problem with this, however. However a plot is going, I truly believe that good writing and good character work can salvage the book. This one, sadly, had neither going for it.
The writing style was clunky and inconsistent. There were all these weird descriptions when the characters find out about their family history. It was like that thug notes guy telling you about Gods and Fates and what not, except it felt super forced and like a very bad attempt at, you know, having a Percy Jackson-esque voice that failed miserably. The dialogue and descriptions were also super odd. I guess the two narrators - the twins - did have distinct voices but I attribute that more to the fact they had the one-dimensional personalities of minions than anything else.
Speaking of the twins, THE CHARACTER WORK HERE WAS SO BAD I WANTED TO CRY!!! The only person I could even remotely stand was Arden. Everyone else was INSUFFERABLE! Aurora is a psychotic bitch who has so many mood swings that I had whiplash trying to keep up with her! Arden just feels sorry for herself for no reason and is supposed to be this meek, shy introverted bookworm or some shit. And those fucking cousins. I swear, if I ever see someone like Lilo irl, I will go to prison because I will murder them in under five seconds and that's a fact. The villains were also such cartoon-ish evil because they are evil villains and the good guys weren't that good tbh. Basically, this character work left much to be desired and desire, I did.
Also ALSO ALSO there was this weirdass romance subplot that happened for five pages in the beginning and end, and like, it was so forced and bad?? You think insta-love is pushing it?? This is some OTHER LEVEL, okay! This is psychic-Insta-love. Where they don't even know each others names, but the guy has been dreaming about her so he straight goes to suck face five seconds after he sees her irl. And it's just like… KMN PLS I CANT HANDLE THIS CRIGNE.
The story ends in a very predictable manner and there's no casualties and tbh, it all goes so well that the stakes just feel manufactured. Which they were, let's be honest.
All in all, did not enjoy it. Would not recommend. Can't believe I actually sat reading the whole thing instead of DNFing at 10% when I FELT like this is how it would go. I'm actually super disappointed because I really was intrigued by the premise and the cover and thought this was going to be a fun read but oofé. Here we are, I guess.