Olympian Challenger (Olympian Challenger Book I – Astrid Arditi)
* I made this review a long time ago but I hadn’t upload it in this page and I think it’s important as I’ll upload the review of the second and third books. *
Synopsis
A hero’s tournament. A defiant contender. Does one girl have the courage to take on Mount Olympus?
Hope’s world doesn’t have room for heroes. She barely has time for schoolwork, swim team, and taking care of her ailing mother. But when she’s invited to a mysterious tournament, the all-powerful hosts won’t take no for an answer.
Transported to Mount Olympus, Hope comes face to face with her new trainers—the pantheon of Greek gods. While other contenders train hard to gain a fighting edge, Hope searches for a way out. Instead, she finds a gorgeous shadow god who may just convince her to stay…
As each round unfolds, the ultimate prize draws closer—the granting of her heart’s deepest desire. If she survives the final challenge, her mother’s cure would be within reach…but only if Hope can ignore the tournament’s dark purpose.
Olympian Challenger is the first book in a bold YA urban fantasy trilogy. If you like Greek mythology, forbidden romance, and feats of courage, then you’ll love Astrid Arditi’s heroic coming-of-age tale.
Review
I have always loved Greek mythology and the last saga I read before starting this book was also about this, so I was pretty obsessed with the subject before starting and had really high expectations about it.
In brief this book seems totally recommendable to me and it fulfilled my expectations, I can’t give it 5 stars because I felt the whole book that I was reading a story instead of really feeling part of it. But I have faith in the following books, I look forward to them (2019 u.u)
The book itself was easy to read and I only had a couple of problems to understand some parts until the context guided me (this may have been because I am not a native English speaker). In fact more than once I got confused if they were talking about Hope the protagonist or about having hope. (Dishonor to my cow for this XD)
The central theme behind the story, the competition, was very entertaining and included enough mythology as a bonus. As for the characters, some just were lovely like Gabriel and Amy. Hope is also an interesting character but it is soooo good that it gets stressful sometimes XD. Most of the characters are introduced drop by drop, which makes you begin to really like them when the story is well advanced. Especially with Kieron, I love his character but I feel I knew him very little and I wish I had seen a little more of his personality change cause it was too drastic for me. Anyway, I’m not too worried about this ‘cause it’s only the first book in the series and we will have time to get to know everyone better and get deeper into the world that Astrid presents to us. Regarding the gods … I love them because they are excessively imperfect. The heroes are much better though, especially Bellerophon (whose name is not so difficult but for some reason I am unable to say aloud XD), but I deeply desire the power of Aphrodite…
Now I need a second to express … probably Heath is the character that I’ve hated the most in centuries! When I started reading, I was sure that he would be part of the typical love triangle and that we would understand why he does everything and blablabla. BUT NOOOOOO, he’s just a damn bastard, if you read this, feel free to hate him from the beginning, do not bother thinking about it XD. Actually I swear I hated him more every chapter and that just reading his name makes me angry, I just Hope (see what I did here? xD) that I’m not offending an important character for Astrid, if so I’m reaaaaally sorry but I still hate him 🙂
I just need to add that I really got kind of obsessed while I read the book and ended in every Astrid group in facebook, don’t even know how that happened. And that I’m IN LOVE with the cover. I strongly recommend to give this book a try.
Bye bye ?