HelloKatieO’s #CBR5 Review #37: Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

This book was delightful in many ways, and disappointing in others. My issue with this book is more an issue with the back cover summary, which induced me to pick it up. The back cover implied that this was going to be “Real World: London,” where 12 or so gods move into a London townhouse, “stop being polite, and start getting real.” I was expecting trashy reality television, with Greek gods.

This book is not that. I took Latin when I was younger, and most of our class was spent learning about the analogous Roman gods and learning very little about actual Latin. The stories are fascinating. This felt like a modern update of a classic story.

Aphrodite and Apollo are engaged in an epic battle of wills. Thousands of years of living among mortals has induced incredible boredom in most of the gods. Their powers are waning as people’s belief in the gods falls. The infighting between Aphrodite and Apollo eventually draws two innocent humans, Neil and Alice, into the world of the gods.

What I didn’t like was the fairly standard “innocent girl dragged into conflict, heroic man rescues her” plot line of Neil and Alice. It was boring in a book that had an otherwise interesting premise and set of characters.

Lisa Bee’s #CBR5 Review #21: Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

As we all know, Gods are immortal, so what happens when they find themselves in the modern era after almost everyone has stopped believing in them? What will their lives be like and will they conform to social norms, or still behave in the ways that they always have? Marie Phillips’ novel Gods Behaving Badly addresses this in a humorous satire about some of the major/most well known Gods of ancient Greece.

If you are interested in knowing more about this novel and what I thought about it, my full review can be found here.