In A Touch of Ruin, Persephone battles with her identity. She’s stuck between wanting to be seen as a mortal to lead a normal life, but having to be in the spotlight now that her relationship with Hades is public. With her relationship out in the open, her boss at New Athens News demands that she writes an exclusive about how they met and fell in love or else she loses her job. Wanting to avoid having to write about herself to keep her goddess identity a secret, Persephone decides to investigate Apollo instead after he dumped and fired Sybil. Meanwhile, Lexa gets into a car crash and enters a coma. Persephone asks Hades to help, but when he refuses, she starts to question his love for her and seeks help elsewhere. We are introduced to Leuce, a nymph that was turned into a tree for millenias for cheating on Hades, who is brought back to life by Demeter to meddle in Persephone and Hades’s relationship.
The story was a bit lackluster for me in this one. When you look at things from the surface, there is a lot going on. Persephone trying to avoid writing an exclusive while keeping her job, the arrival of Leuce, the investigation on Apollo, Lexa’s car crash. But when you look at what happened in all those plots, nothing much moved the story along. Persephone never wrote the exclusive and even got Hades to make her boss back off, she became friends with Leuce, she wrote a scathing article about Apollo, but ended up making a deal with him that prevents her from writing about him further. Lexa is in a coma for most of the story, except for when Persephone gets Apollo to heal her, but then she’s not there mentally because she had actually chosen to die while she was in Limbo and doesn’t want to be in the Upperworld anymore. The main goal of this book was to get Persephone to finally accept that she’s a goddess and that she can’t live a normal life. It also served to strenghten Persephone and Hades’s relationship since she still somehow doubted his love for her. There was a part at the end where Pirithous kidnapped Persephone, but it ended so fast that it barely even did anything to the story.
I was extremely mad at Persephone’s behavior throughout the book. She was extremely selfish and never thought of others. She decided to write an article about Apollo to save her ass even though Sybil had asked her not to. Yes, Sybil ended up agreeing to the article, but she was drunk. Persephone should’ve waited for Sybil to be sober to ask her opinion again. Then with Lexa, Hades explained to her that she was in Limbo to decide whether she wanted to die or come back to the Upperworld, but instead of asking more information, Persephone decided to take it upon herself to bring back Lexa without taking into account what her friend wanted. She also kept getting mad at Hades every time she found something out about his life or businesses. She expected him to have already told her everything there was to know, but the guy has lived for millenias! Of course there will always be things she won’t know! And he has lived alone for all this time, so of course he doesn’t have the reflex to start sharing his days with someone. All she had to do was ask.
Honestly, I was disappointed with this book. I was expecting so much more now that Hades and Persephone were public! But Persephone was so stuck thinking about herself that the story barely progressed. I hope she has learn some things that will make the third book more bareable. As for this one, I sadly give it a 3 out of 5.
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