Goddess of Rain by Jane Frkovich

Title: Goddess of Rain

Author: Jane Frkovich

Series: Lost Gods #1

Reads like fanfiction

Thank you to Jane Frkovich, Danielle Fliller, BooksGoSocial Audio, and NetGalley for allowing me to listen to a free eaudiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Have you ever wanted to read a Percy Jackson and Star Wars crossover fanfic? Or listen to a narrator who sounds like a student reading aloud from a novel in English class, is overly obsessive about enunciating every single vowel and consonant, and who doesn’t know how to pronounce an annoying number of words, such as “envelop”? One does not envelope another in one’s arms.

The story was all over the place, I lost track of the plot. I followed to the point that Zoe wanted to save the earth, or save certain people, but I got lost about the time Hera was approaching Zeus’s ship and everyone panicked and abandoned. Hermes came into it, then Hecate was there. I have no idea why Brandon had to train to fight or what that gala had to do with anything or why Martians were so important. Or what that stuff they stole had to do with anything. Characters were showing up who had no impact on the story, secondary characters were given too much screen time. What in the world did Linnea have to do with anything?

Then not a damn thing really got resolved except Branden and Zoe declaring their love. Eye roll.* We never met Zeus, didn’t see Mom again, nothing was resolved with Hecate or Hermes or Hera or even Hades. Or Hephaestus? Athena? What about Liam? The ending was so abrupt, not helped by the lack of any message or credits at the end, no author’s notes or about the author or even “thanks for listening” from the publisher. Literally just “the end,” done. I don’t recall ever hearing an audiobook end like that.

Back to Hades—this “twist” felt rather like it came out of nowhere. It was born of a period of depression we, again, were only told about but never experienced alongside Zoe. It happened in the past and didn’t feel entirely relevant to now and the plot of the story. She was sad when her mother left again, but otherwise didn’t seem particularly depressed. The unofficial title of Goddess of Rain doesn’t land much impact when everything that earned Zoe that title took place off screen in the past.

(Edit: And hey, what is so depressing about rain? I mean, floods suck, but that’s floods, not rain. Rain is essential for life. It rejuvenates, it feeds. Just saying, “goddess of rain” isn’t necessarily equivalent to “goddess of grief and emotional depression.”)

And all the unconscious adventures I’m just going to label dream sequences—I got so confused on what was real and what wasn’t. SO confused.

*Also I call cheating on character development—“accidentally” jumping into Brandon’s thoughts and being told in detail how he felt about Zoe was not the same as seeing his and Zoe’s relationship develop. We were told the deal between them, not shown.

Additionally, the author would often go into way too much detail about what people, especially the women, were wearing and what their makeup and hair looked like. It was important to the gods, sure, I get that, but the reader doesn’t care if Hera had gold highlighter on her cheekbones. If we needed detailed visuals, we’d watch a movie.

This novel had a lot of charm and some interesting ideas, but unfortunately it did read like fanfiction. So many rookie writing mistakes—overly descriptive about appearance, heavily reliant on dream sequences, way more telling than showing (just because it’s dialogue doesn’t mean it’s not exposition), meandering through filler scenes instead of escalating tension with relevant plot events, too many characters. Oh my god, secondary characters were barfing up exposition in every scene it seemed. Not just explaining story elements, but regurgitating myths we’ve heard a million times. Or at least I have. The story dinked around in dream sequences and eating meals, getting made up and talking, talking, talking. I tuned in and out.

The End

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