Goddess Interrupted by Aimee Carter

Goddess Interrupted (Goddess Test #2) : 1/5 stars

This book was so unbelievably bad I don't understand how it got published.
Now that Kate's accepted her role as the Queen of the Underworld and her mutual love for Henry, she cannot wait to go back to his waiting arms in Hell. However, the welcome is not quite the one she expected, as Kronos, the evil Titan, prepares his vengeance against the Gods with the help of Calliope.
Kate is a whiny judgmental attention whore with whom everyone falls in love in this book (god knows why) and I couldn't stand her. This is especially bad since this is a first person narrative and we had no other choice but to bear with her warped sense of things and her incessant comments about how Ava and Persephone are sluts.
The story? Well, there isn't one. This should have taken one third of a book, however it just stretched and stretched and stretched and it was all unnecessary. Nothing happens. Kate goes to the Underworld, have 5 pages long emotional debates, shit happens, she has emotional turmoils and fights with Henry. That's it, folks. You don't have to read it anymore.
The "romantic relationship" between her and Henry is the most frustrating crap. Henry has turned into an utter jerk duing those 6 months of summer - wait, no, not in a jerk. In a stone. He's basically a wall and Kate turns into a spoiled attention whore. Do you know any tenenovelas or Korean dramas? Do you see how the two main characters are in love at first, but don't dare to say it because of crappy misunderstandings like one of them thinks the girl is actually a man and don't want to be gay, or one of them catches the other with a girl but it's actually his sister and it lasts really long until finally one of them decides to kiss the other. This is this book. Crappy telenovela-worthy misunderstandings that keep Kate and Henry away and it's just annoying and you want to both slap both of them but mostly Kate.
Plus, the author continues to completely butcher the mythology. Henry is still depicted as a poor victim, Persephone as a slut and Kate still allows herself to judge her. What does she know about marriage, tell me, with her 18 years of life and no previous boyfriend experience? Yet she goes "I'm holier-than-thou" on everyone. And what was up with Dylan refusing to participate in the battle? At first I didn't care and in the ending, the real name of the Gods are reminded and I see "Dylan -> Ares". How does that make sense, Ares backing out on a battle but Aphrodite volunteering? This was horrible.
I do not recommend this book at all and won't purchase the third book.

Awaken by Katie Kacvinsky

Awaken #1 by Kate Kacvinsky : 1/5 stars.

The plot of Awaken intrigued me : set in a future where people live like hermits in their house, where all human interaction has been replaced by virtual interaction on the computer. The main character is a teenager whose father helped put this future in place by creating Digital Schools - virtual school, so that students don't have to leave the computer to study. She suddenly takes a leap of faith and decides to meet some dude she met on a chatroom, who just happened to be some leader of the revolution against computers.
I wanted to like this book, really. I read it in two days : it can't be that bad, then, right? But honestly I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
The main character is supposed to be this shy girl used to being a hermit, not used to human interaction and like three chapters after meeting her Love Interest, she becomes instantly this brave sarcastic smart-ass who can hack computers and isn't afraid of anything. The author explained this completely stupid change by repeating that "[her love interest] brought out the better side of herself" but I don't really found this logicial nor believable. She's just flat. It seems like she got into this big revolution against virtual life merely because she can feel tinkling on her arm when Love Interest touches her...
That's the thing too. The Love Interest is just too present in this book. It seemed to me that the dystopian part was some kind of secondary plotline, a pretext and that the love story (which wasn't even all that interesting, to make it worse) was the main event. I know YA dystopia is in right now, but come on.. She spends 3/4 of the book pining for Love Interest, then in ecstasy because she finds him and then in pure misery because he temporarily leaves. She could have spent that time thinking, say, about a way to save her society from endoctrinement? Nope!
Their love story is also boring. And Love Interest does this annoying thing that 90% YA Love Interests do, that "oh no honey you can't lift a finger and help you're way too precious for me" trope that is supposed to be romantic, but really is condescending and infuriating.
The book is still a quick read, it's nicely written, too but it feels like it's just surfing on this YA dystopian fashion and brings nothing new to the already overflowing table.