Book: Lovestruck | Author: Kate Watson | Publisher: Flux books | Pages: 300 (Paperback) | Release Date: 2nd April 2019 | Rating: ★★★★ | YA romance & fantasy
What’s it about?
Sixteen-year-old cupid-in-training Kali is in an Olympus-sized mountain of trouble. Rule number one in arrow-toting matchmaking: don’t stick yourself. But accidents happen, and Kali instantly falls hard for her indie rock, bass-playing target, Benicio.
The God of Love is going to kill her. Even if he is her dad.
Being the daughter of Eros isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For one thing, a girl can get jaded when her parents have the most beautiful and fatalistic love story in history. For another, immortality royally sucks when the Oracle condemns you to eternity in the wrong profession. Do the Gods care that Kali wants to ditch the love stuff and be a muse?
Nope.
To reclaim her heart and her destiny, Kali is left with no choice but to defy the Gods, tempt the Fates, date the mortal love-of-her-life, and hope she doesn’t lose her best friend, Hector, in the process. (source)
What did I think?
*Thank you to Flux and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.*
Yes hello I’m always a sucker for books featuring ancient gods in a modern scenario. And this was no exception. I expected a light, fun read and that was exactly what the book turned out to be. The story was light and fluffy, easy to read and so much fun. I snorted and laughed a lot while reading. Seriously, this was so fun from start to finish. For one, there is the hilariously dramatic story. Sorry, I don’t know how to put dramatic and hilarious in one word. If there is a word for this, please let me know. Because that word would describe the book in its entirety perfectly!
The characters were not really deep. I would have wished for more background information for most of them. But then there were a lot of people there and the book is not that long. It was sufficient for the story though. There is Kali, the protagonist, who is kind of a special snowflake in my opinion. She is one of those characters who are different from the other people. Or feel different, because she isn’t that much different, actually. She is the daughter of Eros and Psyche and is training to be a cupid. She accidentally pricks herself with an arrow and falling head over heels for Ben, a boy she is supposed to match with his best friend. Of course, drama only starts there. Kali finds a way how she could undo the spell, but it will be difficult. Luckily, she gets help from her best friend, Deya. She is a daughter of Aphrodite and in the same school year as Kali.
She is always there when Kali needs her, even doing unpleasant things for her if need be. She is very loyal and always trying to prove her worth.
The two of them are supervised by the goddess Artemis who gets sucked into the drama of love as well, especially when her brother Apollo starts to sabotage everything.
I found Ben to be rather annoying. He is one of the characters with a backstory, even if we only meet his family very shortly and they aren’t important to the story. But to be honest? I’m not sure about his character. He was just so childish(?) at some points and overly jealous and just acting weird. I liked Hector way more, even though he, too, was acting kind of weird from time to time. Well, they’re all teenagers, and remembering myself during that age… I was probably the same way. Urghs. I did not like the love triangle drama much, but I was relieved that it was only a light triangle? I don’t know how to explain this, but there were signs of it, but it was not really explored. Luckily.
The story was interesting as well. As I said earlier, I love ancient gods in modern settings. And everyone in this story was so quirky and loveable and fun? I loved it! There was a lot of stuff happening, especially feelings and drama and complications thanks to it. It was well explained how and why the gods interact with the mortal world and what their purpose is. The writing style really fit the character of the book, it was light and fun, modern and easy.
Overall, I enjoyed this a lot and basically flew through the book. It was such a great mix of romance, fun and weird gods.
