Review: The Gods of Love by Nicola Mostyn

The Gods of Love
Nicola Mostyn
Published: Feb. 1, 2018 (Piaktus)
Purchase: Book Depository or Amazon or Amazon UK
Review source: copy provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review

Reviewed by: Jo

Rating (out of 5): 3.5 stars

Frida is rocking life right now: She runs her own divorce law practice, has a beautiful flat with beautiful things in it, and is about to go for an interview for a career-making contract at the world’s biggest technology company, NeoStar. And so what if she’s single? In her line of work she knows better than most that love is overrated.

When a man barges into her office, claiming to see the future and talking about Greek mythology and Frida being “the chosen one,” she kicks him out and chalks it up to him having “issues.” That is until things going very very awry during her interview, where Frida is left with the stinking feeling this guy may actually have been onto something.

It turns out Frida is in fact a descendant of the Greek god Eros, and her immortal uncle, the lesser know God of anti-love, Anteros is hell-bent on taking down the human world. As if that wasn’t enough, apparently Frida is the one prophesied to stop him. With Dan’s (aka the Oracle, aka crazy office guy) help, Frida will have to unlock the secrets of the ancient myths, some of which turn out not to be myths at all.

With the tagline “Bridget Jones by way of Neil Gaiman” there was absolutely no way I could resist picking up The Gods of Love. With a late twenties female main character, traversing the singles life in a UK city (I think, more on that later), I can see what they were going for with that tagline, but lacking the levity or humor of Miss Jones, this is much more American Gods than it is Bridget. And that isn’t a bad thing, just not necessarily what I was expecting.

I liked Frida. She’s smart and logical, taking as much of this new world in her stride as she can, but still has those “WTF is going on” moments that make her feel realistic and relatable. She feels somewhat detached at the beginning the story, and I thought Mostyn did a great job of working her backstory into her character growth. While love is a dominant theme within this book, I liked that any form of romance between Frida and Dan was slow build. It had poignant moments, but in no way overshadowed the action.

The imaginings of certain settings from mythology were absolutely fantastic, most notably the underworld and the labyrinth. I loved the idea of waning gods latching on to modern day consumerism to try to restore their sway over the world. This translated into a plot that has a definite quest vibe, wrathful gods and scary minions included.

My major issue with this book was that there are hints throughout that something is up with how people love, but it never really explains whether this is a comment on modern society as we know it, or this is in fact a dystopian/alternative world where there is actually a supernatural force interfering with mortals abilities to retain relationships. This isn’t helped by the fact that Frida only ever refers to where she lives as “the City,” so I never knew if this was London, another UK city, or in fact a totally made up one. Not knowing the full parameters of the world was like an annoying wasp buzzing in my ear the whole way through.

All in all, I really enjoyed The Gods of Love. I think there is going to be a sequel, and while the lack of clarity in the worldbuilding bugged me, I’d actually be happy if it went either direction. I’m definitely interested to see not only how Dana and Frida’s relationship progresses, but also what other interpretations of classic mythology Nicola Mostyn has up her sleeve.

Sexual content: kissing