Genre: Paranormal Romance{ Goddess Summoning Series}

Mass Market Publishing 384 pages

Amazon or Kindle

Lina is a middle-aged owner of a troubled bakery in Tulsa Oklahoma. In order to save her bakery from bankruptcy she happens upon an Italian goddess’s cookbook and is tasked with trading places with the young goddess Persephone in order to bring maturity and light to the Underworld. In return, Persephone will turn Lina’s bakery around and learn a few things from us mortals. Hades is hardened by a life of a lonely existence and wants’ nothing more than to experience a true joining of souls.  What Lina doesn’t expect to find is love with the dark Lord of the Underworld, only, is he in love with her, or the body she encapsulates?

For many of us Romance allows us the ability to dream and hope. A lot of people scoff at the notion that romance leads to unrealistic expectations on love (thank you He’s Just Not That In to You). But for me, I find that it offers a break from the sometimes bleak existence of day to day life. We are told so often to ‘get our head out of the clouds’, to make fun of the dreamers and those ghastly ‘glass half-full people’. But in actuality, what is so wrong with wishes and hope? To have silly little dreams about mystical creatures and distant times? I say absolutely nothing! P.C. Cast and authors such as Leanna Renee Heiber allow us to put away our cynical, modernist views and give us the canvas in order to sigh helplessly at the fate of our heroines and give us an outlet to be a helpless romantic.

I was amazed at the vivid detail and the spell the author weaved of this mystical place called Hades. Goddess of Spring made me realize that I had been missing stories that include a romance. Don’t get me wrong, I love a great contemporary paranormal romance or erotica story but like any diet where you have been eating the same things over and over again, it’s nice to mix it up a bit. This book illustrates the love story between two impossible people, a God and a mortal inside the body of a Goddess.  What better way to tug on a romantic junkie’s heart strings than with the tale of an impossible love.

I felt compelled by this book to really think about what is love? Is it the true meeting of two souls who have found each other at long last, or a physical joining of two people?  My inner cynic was having a field day with this premise.   I couldn’t help but be captivated when Lina reveals her true self to Hades and he sees her without her Goddess-like body, vulnerable and exposed.  Can he truly love what lies beneath or is the artifice of such beautiful perfection what has captured his attention?  Ah, I grabbed my heart and swallowed past the lump in my throat waiting with bated breath to see if Lina, as herself, is truly enough to capture of love of a God. I won’t tell you the rest, but this one definitely caused a little mistiness in this young cynic’s eyes.

She stepped into a dream.

The floor was the same smooth, seamless black that made up the road and the exterior of the palace, but the inner walls were miraculously changed. They were ebony veined with the palest of white; day and night merged harmoniously together. From tall ceiling hung chandeliers made of faceted stones and candlelight. The flames caught the jewels and sparkled like the sun on water.

Rating

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