Oh. My. Gods.

Oh. My. Gods.
by Tera Lynn Childs
YA fiction. 264 pp.
Dutton. 2008.

flap copy:

If Phoebe Castro can keep her grades up and have another stellar cross-country season, her dream of attending USC with her best friends is only a track scholarship away. She's made all her plans, so it's a complete shock when her mom announces she's marrying a mysterious stranger and moving them halfway around the world—to Greece.

Phoebe's stuck on a secret island in the Aegean, attending the super-exclusive Academy, where her new stepfather is the headmaster and the kids are anything but your average students—they are descendants of the Greek gods, superpowers included. That's right, Greek gods are no myth! If Phoebe thought high school was hard, she knows this is going to be mortal misery.

Securing that scholarship seems like Phoebe's only ticket out of Greece, but training and maintaining her grades will be grueling, even without a sabotaging stepsister from Hades and a gorgeous guy—what a god!—who just might be her Achilles' heel. One thing is for sure—summoning the will to win and finding her place among the gods could be Phoebe's toughest course yet.

The Greek gods get a makeover in this romantic odyssey of mythic proportion.

So it would appear that I'm kinda sorta in this Greek mythology mood this year. If my count is correct, this is the fifth related book I've read this year. And I have another series on my shelf that I can start if I want, which I might, considering how much the Boy liked it.

Overall, I'm left with an average impression of Oh. My. Gods. I take a bit of issue with Phoebe neglecting the good, nice guy, even though he is every bit as much a god as the jerkwad she does go after. I think the overall plot and world development is a bit shallow and unsatisfying. I'm not sure if I even like Phoebe.

However, it's nice to read a sports book about a girl. The moments about running are genuinely good in terms of description and feeling. (During these scenes, it made me think of Samantha.) I really liked that this novel didn't constrain itself to the pantheon, as a good portion of the kids are descendants of the minor gods.

Oh. My favorite part of the world is how Childs deals with high school cliques:

The second floor hall is full of students, and from the outside they all look normal. I see all the standard cliques. Populars here and nerds there. Jocks in a huddle and cheerleaders all around them. Freaks glaring at everyone from the corner and geeks trying to avoid getting knocked down. Stoners, burnouts, prudes, and skanks. Nothing unusual.

"Look at that group." Nicole points across the hall.

Clustered around a set of lockers, a group of girls with perfect hair, heavy makeup, and suggestive clothing cling to boys with metrosexual taste in fashion and gel-spiked hair. Miniskirts and tight T-shirts abound. Not so different from the populars at Pacific Park.

"Steer clear of them," Nicole warns. "The Zeus set. Power, privilege, and partying. They make Paris Hilton look like a Vestal Virgin."

Surfers are, obviously, Poseidon's; geeks are Hephaestus. But the best—"the Hades harem":

The group just rounding the corner look like your average Goths—black hair, black clothes, black eyeliner—but with an edge. Pretty fitting for the god of the underworld's descendants.

In the end, it was an okay book, a library read.* According to this interview, there's a sequel in the works. That might be a good thing, as there were some loose ends and plot points dropped in the novel that never did anything.

Other review:
Becky's Book Reviews

*I actually checked this book out from the library. I know! Miracles never cease. And my fingers didn't fall off from touching pages that have been touched by countless others. Will this be the turn of a new leaf? Will Dec be able to breathe and not relax about figuring where to put in another bookshelf? Likely not. But you never know.