A review by ravensandlace
Godly Heathens by H.E. Edgmon

2.0

Title: Godly Heathens

Author: H. E Edgmon

Genre: YA Fantasy

Format: hardback library book

Series: The Ouroboros (#1)

Star Rating: 2 stars

tw: graphic gore and body horror, violence including murder and torture, off-page sexual violence including experiences involving children, abuse including child abuse and off-page domestic abuse, mentions of transphobia and racism including references to slavery and genocide, animal death

*All these trigger warnings are located in the front of the book

A special thank you goes to St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for providing me with an early copy of this book. Please know that this does not influence my rating or thoughts on the book itself.

No one is more disappointed than me about the low rating I gave this book. This was one of my most anticipated reads since last year. I was immediately hooked by the cover and then I read the synopsis and I was obsessed. But I just could not enjoy this book at all and it’s all because of the main character, Gem.

Gem is so incredibly unlikable. I think they are supposed to be but they went over the line and there were no redeeming factors in their personality. I couldn’t deal with how stuck up and awful Gem was. They were constantly judging everyone and thought they were better than everyone. One instance that sticks out to me is when they were talking about their best friend, Enzo. They said that Enzo acted gayer than he was and said their whole personality was fake. They also said that they hated them for it. It was just too much and made me so mad. Why would you hate your best friend for their personality? What’s the point of even being friends with them? I had a problem with the way Gem treated their mom as well but if I dove into that, we would be here all day. So let’s just say, Gem is pretty unlikable. 

While I very much enjoyed the lore, it was so frustrating that it came in bits and pieces. I do understand why it was but there was so much of it, that it needed to be almost info dumped for me to fully understand. I’m unsure if the lore was based on ancient gods, like Greek, or it was something entirely different. I enjoyed the bits I did get but I just wanted more. 

I want to put at least one positive thing about this book because I think all books have at least one redeeming quality. I loved all the rep that was in this book. It was filled with lots of LGBT+ rep and that was wonderful to see. I couldn’t even begin to list them because there were so many, which is a good problem to have. There were also POC characters and it was just all organic. It didn’t feel forced or anything. 

Overall, I just couldn’t love this book the way I wanted to and I am so disappointed. Gem was a main character I simply couldn’t get behind due to a lot of their actions and their personality. I recently found out that I have the arc for the second book so I might as well continue with the series to see if it gets better. I truly hope it does.