A Touch of Darkness, by Scarlett St. Clair, is a retelling of Hades and Persephone’s story from Greek mythology. It is set in a more modern time in New Athens. Persephone is in her last year of college, studying journalism and is about to start her internship at New Athens News. To celebrate her internship, her friend Lexa brings her to Hades’s nightclub, Nevernight. There, Persephone lets Hades teach her poker only to find out it locked her into a contract with him. Hades’s terms are for her to create life in the Underworld in six months or else she’ll live in the Underworld for the rest of her life. Mad at this ultimatum, Persephone decides to use her internship and write about Hades’s contracts, only to find there is more to them, and to Hades, as she previously thought.
I really enjoyed the plot of this book. It was refreshing reading about Hades and Persephone in a more modern setting. I really like the twist of Hades actually being a good guy and trying to challenge people to overcome something bad that’s keeping them from moving forward. I also love how protective he is of Persephone and how he genuily cares about her from the beginning. Persephone, on the other hand, had a tendancy to really frustrate me. She just kept whining the whole book about her unfair and impossible contract. Even when she was falling in love with Hades she still didn’t believe he had good intentions. She also never believed a single word he told her. She would ask him a question, he would answer with the truth, she’d get mad because it wasn’t the answer she wanted, but then another character would tell her the same thing and she’d be like “oh, I hadn’t thought about it that way. Thank you for telling me”. It was so infuriating. She also believed what her ennemies would tell her about Hades instead of going to ask Hades about it and believing him. The other thing that bothered me a bit, and it might just be because I’m not used to these kinds of books, but there were just too many spicy scenes at the end. The build up was amazing. All the times they almost went through with it, but stopped or got interrupted made the moment they finally did it so satisfying. But after that first time they were doing it almost every 5 pages, and it just felt like too much. After the 3rd time they’d done it I was already over it and just wanted to skip those scenes to get back to the plot.
This book is honestly a 4 out of 5. It could’ve been a 5 out of 5 if it wasn’t for Persephone being such an infuriating idiot. I saw the author also wrote this book from Hades’s point of view. I’m actually quite curious to read it from his point of view. Might like it better. I’ll definitely give it a shot!
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