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A review by sassyykassie
The Gatekeeper's Sons by Eva Pohler
2.0
DNFed at about 80%.
The things I loved:
The take on Greek gods and goddesses felt very flushed out. I enjoyed getting to see all the different gods and their reactions with each other as well as with our main human characters.
The things that I didn't love:
It feels a lot like Twilight but greek gods instead of vampires.
While this is supposed to take place in current time with a 16 year old as our MC... our characters' actions made it feel like a historical fiction. The biggest thing for me was our characters waiting until they got home to call each other on their home phones. Teens generally don't do that.. they text or FaceTime whenever they want.
Our main character experiences both of her parents' death in a very traumatic situation at the start of this novel. And for approximately 1 week, she feels like an accurate representation of someone who has gone through that. But her grief is quickly forgotten when the cute god-boy comes onto the scene.
Why I DNFed: (minor spoilers)
In less than ten minutes, we have two very big moments that happen to our secondary and tertiary characters that just didn't feel like they were explained in a respectful way.
TW - suicide, sexual assault -
First, our MC's friend calls her up and suddenly tells her that another (tertiary) character's mom committed suicide last night. It just felt weird. I had some vibes about the scenes that follow and how our MC talks with the tertiary character, etc
Then we find out that our MC's good friend's dad has come back home and there's some tension about that. We switch perspectives and watch this friend's youngest brother take the dad's side while the friend is clearly upset that the dad has come home. In this scene there is a line where the youngest brother says something like "it's your (the friend who is the only female sibling) fault he left in the first place and it's (the oldest brother's fault) for telling!) In this scene the mom does appear to have our female friend (her daughter) as her first priority. She first says that between the dad and her, she'll pick her every time. All feels like this is going okay. EXCEPT the mom then says "but doesn't everyone deserve a second chance?" NO NOT IF THE FIRST TIME HE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED HIS OWN DAUGHTER. It felt gross and I couldn't continue, especially given that these aren't our main characters. It doesn't feel relevant whatsoever to the main plot.
The things I loved:
The take on Greek gods and goddesses felt very flushed out. I enjoyed getting to see all the different gods and their reactions with each other as well as with our main human characters.
The things that I didn't love:
It feels a lot like Twilight but greek gods instead of vampires.
While this is supposed to take place in current time with a 16 year old as our MC... our characters' actions made it feel like a historical fiction. The biggest thing for me was our characters waiting until they got home to call each other on their home phones. Teens generally don't do that.. they text or FaceTime whenever they want.
Our main character experiences both of her parents' death in a very traumatic situation at the start of this novel. And for approximately 1 week, she feels like an accurate representation of someone who has gone through that. But her grief is quickly forgotten when the cute god-boy comes onto the scene.
Why I DNFed: (minor spoilers)
In less than ten minutes, we have two very big moments that happen to our secondary and tertiary characters that just didn't feel like they were explained in a respectful way.
TW - suicide, sexual assault -
First, our MC's friend calls her up and suddenly tells her that another (tertiary) character's mom committed suicide last night. It just felt weird. I had some vibes about the scenes that follow and how our MC talks with the tertiary character, etc
Then we find out that our MC's good friend's dad has come back home and there's some tension about that. We switch perspectives and watch this friend's youngest brother take the dad's side while the friend is clearly upset that the dad has come home. In this scene there is a line where the youngest brother says something like "it's your (the friend who is the only female sibling) fault he left in the first place and it's (the oldest brother's fault) for telling!) In this scene the mom does appear to have our female friend (her daughter) as her first priority. She first says that between the dad and her, she'll pick her every time. All feels like this is going okay. EXCEPT the mom then says "but doesn't everyone deserve a second chance?" NO NOT IF THE FIRST TIME HE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED HIS OWN DAUGHTER. It felt gross and I couldn't continue, especially given that these aren't our main characters. It doesn't feel relevant whatsoever to the main plot.