Girl Divided by Willow Rose

Girl Divided is a standalone novel and creates a story about old Gods in legends and their influence in present-day life. There are some spoilers ahead but if you were reading the story you would have figured them out already anyway.

Jetta was born with unique markings on her face. A line right down the middle divides her into half-black and half-white. The second American civil war breaks out where any black person is believed to be evil and placed in camps or killed. Jetta finds herself in a unique situation in that she doesn’t really fit into either side. She meets Tyler in a camp and together they are able to break out to try and find freedom elsewhere. On the journey Jetta discovers that she is the daughter of Shango, an African God of fire and lightning, and Lovitar, a Finnish Goddess of death. With these genes running through her will she be able to end the divisive conflict and save mankind?

I have read a number of this author’s books and again she is such a hit and miss. This was a miss for me. Firstly the fact that pretty much every single white person in the book suddenly turned against every other race and was willing to kill them was a bit abrupt. It was confusing as to who was actually in the black population as originally it was everyone who was not white and then other races were brought in and then they were not black enough. The fact that Jetta could hide either side of her face from others merely by pulling her hoodie down did not sit well – how does a hoodie hide a vertical side perfectly? I think the thing that nearly stopped me reading (and I generally read a book all the way through as I owe the author an honest opinion) was when all of a sudden Jetta could command armies of the dead (as she is now in charge of black and white)and she summons them all to a battle. The number described, however, is hundreds of millions. How on earth do hundreds of millions of dead people all get together in one spot? Jetta also has an unfortunate influence on others where if there is peace, conflict will emerge. Since she is two living in one you would think that she would be able to do the opposite.

The book suddenly ended at 87%, which was a bit annoying as I tend to keep an eye on the space left as you can gauge what could be coming up. But actually, I was quite glad. I much prefer some of the fantasy and thriller books that the author has published and just feel that this one missed the mark in so many ways. The basic idea was very interesting but the execution was not for me. I will say that I looked up more info on the characters mentioned in the book and learnt of the mythology so that was one good thing to take away. The actual story, not so much...