Goddess of Light by P.C. Cast

Pamela Gray is an Interior Designer who never had time for a life, or a romance. All the men she's met or tried going out with were controlling or egomaniacs or both, and she's tired of all that. Is a romance with a hot, caring, considerate guy too much to ask in the modern age? She doesn't think so, but it's damn hard to find.

Then, travelling to Vegas to take on a job for a writer named E.D. Faust, creator of fantasy novels, she finally thinks she's going to be let loose with unlimited money to spend who has actual taste. Until she finds out that his idea of "good design" is Caesar's Hotel and Casino, a tacky dump if she ever saw it. It's an idea of what Imperial Rome must have looked like- if Romans had an abundance of money and absolutely no taste at all.

Meanwhile, up on Olympus, Bacchus is royally pissed. After all the other gods had forgotten about earth, he'd adopted Las Vegas as his personal stomping ground. But now it has been discovered by the other Gods, and Zeus has ordered him to allow them in the playground he considers exclusively his. To take his revenge on the other Gods, he manipulates Pamela into invoking the Goddess Artemis and asking for a wish, in way she cannot refuse. And Pamela wishes for a love affair with a perfect lover.

To fulfill her wish, Artemis asks her brother, Apollo, to play the part of Pamela's lover. It should be no problem for him with all the nymphs, dryads and humans he's pursued, should it? Apollo, pleased by Pamela's looks, agrees, and begins to romance her in the midst of Las Vegas.

So while Pamela is struggling to fulfill E.D. Faust's desires with regards to his new home, Apollo arranges to bump into Pamela and begin to romance her. But even though Pamela wants to find love, her past failures make her hesitant to jump into a new romance, even with someone as handsome and too good to be true as the God Apollo. But as he spends more time with her, wooing her and finding out what she desires, then providing it, he begins to realize that even his heart isn't immune to love.

Artemis, too, has found a devoted Admirer in E.D. Faust, and thanks to her, Pamela finds E.D. pulling back from his more vulgar tastes, going to something much more refined and classy, which pleases Pamela to no end. But Bacchus, eager to bring trouble to the Gods, does his level best to kill off Pamela, and an all too mortal Apollo, who has shed his divinity to be with her. But too many stories of mortals and Gods end in tragedy, none more often than in the Greek Myths. Can Apollo and Pamela find happiness forever after together, or will all their happiness end in sadness and death?

I love P.C. Cast's writing, and this was another book of hers whose ending made me cry. The bittersweet beauty of the characters, the writing and their fate made me break down for a three-hanky cry, and made me cry again every single time I went back to it, because I couldn't stop reading it over and over again.

This book took the character of Apollo, a spoiled God who was used to thinking only about himself, to whom humans were toys, and turned him into a real human being, who became actual friends with other human beings and who fell in love with Pamela for who she was, someone who treasured her and despite wanting to turn her into a goddess, too, realized that she wouldn't be happy living in the cage of Olympus, no matter how well-gilded. Artemis, too, comes to see humans as living beings rather than toys, and even thought she tends to be more cool, stand-offish and arrogant than her twin, also comes to real human life in these pages. The two gods brought Pamela what she desired, but in turn, she brought them real life and made both of them human.

The lessons they learned are such that at the end of the book, Apollo chooses to give up being a God for a single human lifetime to spend it with Pamela. To live, to have children, to love and grow old together. And it's the most beautiful thing I have ever read. I can't recommend this book highly enough. More than for any book I have reviewed before, read this one. Just read it. You won't be sorry you did.