From the first page, this book yanked all my attention and I had such a great time reading it.
What I want to highlight first are the tropes and how they are used to form an engaging story. They are familiar, tropes that many people me included know from mainly adventurous fantasy novels, yet still fresh and moulded into their best versions. A teen is discovering they have unimaginable powers, but the way Gem's personality and their desires crash with the new reality brings a really interesting point of view on the whole thing. They want to finally move away from their small town, and live with Enzo, and the need to keep these felt so emotional. Gem’s whole character and their relationships with others were one of my favourite parts of the book. Because Gem is not one of the likeable characters I expected to read about, they are messy and make decisions that are not good, but the way their point of view moved the story and their emotions were written was genuinely one of the best ways I’ve ever read.
The world-building is also impressive, The choice of godly powers each of the deities possessed was interesting and I also liked the way Gem experienced memories of their past lives one by one. The other characters themselves all had so much depth to them, even the ones who had less time during the story were nicely developed.
I loved this book, the twists and the humour too, and I am so excited to read the second book as soon as possible.

Thank you to NetGalley and Daphne Press for gifting me this arc.

Godly Heathens is book that certainly delves into a gritty alternate reality where Gods are real, and they're severely messed up.

Gem, our main character and narrator, just wants good to happen in their life. They want to move to New York and be with their partner, Enzo, and be away from the south of America where they don't feel completely seen. Then one day, Willa Mae comes into Gem's life, and uproots it completely. Gem is a god, and not just any god. The most powerful god on their old world. And the majority of the other gods want them dead.

What Godly Heathens loses in execution, it makes up for in enthusiasm. The premise was something I was incredibly excited for. However, I was left underwhelmed for the majority of the book, and only began to enjoy the pacing and the overall goings on in the story in the last twenty percent of it. The twists were seen from a mile away, but were still graciously accepted by me the reader, as I worry that without the twists, the book would've been a lower rating.

What I will say is that the characters themselves were incredibly fun. Poppy being my absolute fave, and Willa Mae was a close second. I loved the constant discussion of what makes a good person (or character) and that the book doesn't shy away from the fact that none of these characters are not fully 'good' or fully 'bad'. Good and bad in this book is interchangeable, and these godly teens are just trying to figure out how many shades of grey they really are.

I believe that this book has a lot of promise, I just think that the execution was uneven and lacking at times.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this eARC!

I found myself at a crossroads with Godly Heathens. It has so much in it that I enjoyed while at the same time having issues I personally couldn’t bring myself to ignore.

The story of gods being stuck in the bodies of teenagers fighting a war that’s been going on for centuries is such a riveting concept and parts of that shone through so beautifully in this book. When things hit here it HITS and I loved it. There were such lovely rumination's on the nature of good and evil, what destiny means and what part do we play as individuals in that. I also found my teenage self in Gem, our protagonist. They’re messy and complicated and trying to work out who they are, what they want from life and who they want to be in a way I knew 17 year old me would have felt so hard. Also being a queer POC they face even more issues piled on top of that, so it just binds together for someone who would be on shaky ground identity wise at best. I found them fascinating and can’t wait to see where they go in the second book.

I also loved their relationship with Willa Mae/Aurora. I’m a sucker for reincarnated lovers and love stories spanning generations so every time we heard about their past lives together it made me so incredibly happy. Rory is also for sure my favourite character here. She’s stubborn and strong and smart and seeing her have to work through the plot with someone like Gem is so interesting to read.

My main issues here stemmed from the use of certain vernacular and pop culture references (I feel personally it dates a book so incredibly fast) that I felt myself personally cringe at when I read them in parts of the book.

Another issue I had was with the pacing, as it felt that the intro section seemed to last longer than it should have and the plot was being dragged behind certain scenes without any urgency.

Overall this is 3.5 star read for me and I am interested in picking up the sequel as soon as I can, as I believe there is potential here for a development and even better storytelling.

A deliciously angst-ridden contemporary fantasy adventure with its own mythology, full to bursting with multifaceted trans, nonbinary, and indigenous characters!

This felt like exactly the kind of fantasy novel I wanted so desperately to read as a teen. Even now in my late 20s this was a straight up delightful experience.

A cohort of morally grey teens who may or may not know they're the reincarnations of gods from another world waking up to that knowledge and the actions their past selves took. Trans gods, nonbinary gods, a beautiful mishmash of different queer identities and experiences. Metaphorically flipping off the concept of a love triangle and diving headfirst into polyamory negotiations. The aches of coming of age balanced delicately against echoes of the same dramas in the larger fantastical conflict.

Sure, there were occasional pacing issues, and one or two twists I saw coming, but that didn't stop me from having a great time from beginning to end. How I wish I'd had this when I was a teen! Highly recommend.

The book has a really cool setting, being modern but with a twist. Unfortunately I had a hard time getting into the book, and found it a bit long winded at times. But it was really fun to read about a queer main character and har some other lgbt characters too. It felt quite real with how all of that was portrayed. The same can definitely be said about the mental health struggles on the book.
Wonderfully written on this parts

This ARC was provided by NetGalley and Daphne Press (Illumicrate's Press arm), NOT Wednesday (St Martin's Press). I support the boycott of St. Martin’s Press.

DNF: 75%. I choose to DNF this book as I found it mentally much more challenging than I am currently able to handle and felt it wasn't suited for me. I am giving this a 3.5 stars, but I think many will rate this higher for them.

This book is a lot. I tend to stick to happy even when labelled as a dark book, but this is wearing some scars that feel familiar and painful. And likely because it is very raw about mental health and the people are messy and mean at times (not the mean girl mean, but the other I say hurtful things mean). Some of those things (a lot of the first) I found myself slightly relating to but more being overwhelmed by empathy to the point it hurts.

For its intended young adults, I think this book holds something precious, something more unique than many of the generic fantasy YA books out there. There is a lot of angst and these character hurt each other with words like knives. But it is wonderfully written, queer af, and an interesting plot. Read your trigger warnings going in.

Godly Heathens is the morally grey queer YA American Gods of my dreams. It's voicey, pacey, and exactly the kind of messy story about messy, imperfect people that today's queer teens need and deserve. The diversity and inclusivity are incredible without ever feeling tokenistic, the thematic material juicy, the plot propulsive; and while the book is dark as anything, it feels from start to finish like YA that is written for actual teenagers rather than adult YA fans. I had an incredible time and can't wait for book 2.

Thanks so much to Daphne Press and NetGalley for the eARC!

I did not finish this book, but I really wish I could have. The writing was very good, the world building intriguing.
However, the (body)horror descriptions were a bit too much for my very visual brain, and the mental health representation was very well done, so well done that it influenced my own a little too much, so I had to stop reading :( I really hope to return to this book in the future when my (mental) health is a bit more sturdy!

Unfortunately, the delivery of this one didn’t live up to the intriguing (and exciting) premise. I love a reincarnation story. I’m here for gods waking amongst us, alternative but mirror dimensions and also magic, mystery, and murder. I LOVED that this was unapologetically queer, with visible, unquestioned queer voices at the forefront in a way that would have been amazing to read as a teen!

On paper, this should have been a wonderful read considering, but there were slightly too many inconsistencies and things which I personally felt needed improving for me to properly enjoy this one, to the extent that it had promise for me to.

Characters
Initially, I loved Gem. As a YA main character, they offer that really enjoyable “flair” that makes these narratives so fun to read. However, as the book went on, I found them to be more bark than bite in terms of power, action, and actual development themselves. There was a lot of dependency here, where I would have expected or liked to see agency from Gem as their story and understanding of their self progressed. There was also a lot of positioning themselves as the “villain”, and while I’m ALWAYS down for a villain arc, to me it never seemed as though they did anything truly worthy of either the hatred they received, or indeed this position as “antagonist.” I would have liked to see something that actually made me think of them as a “villain” rather than someone forced to do immoral things for the good of other people. Villainy is complex, sure, but the proof was not in the pudding, as they say.

Enzo however, was the one shining light in this whole thing. I loved his character, the drama and oftentimes brevity he brought to the (ever-expanding) cast. His were the lines I bookmarked most, when they made me laugh or hum approvingly. I felt that of anyone, he was the richer developed, and enjoyed his character most as a result.

Willa Mae, as the third main character, was a bit of an enigma for me. I liked elements of their character, but I also found them woefully underwhelming, especially when it came to navigating obstacles and relationship problems with Gem. There were also inconsistencies with their character which I am still unsure where deliberate or not, or just easy outs for the plot - even after discussing with another ARC reader.

Overall, the cast felt underwhelming, and somewhat poorly developed as individuals. These are reincarnated gods, and while yes, they were reincarnated as teenagers, there was no real sense of their power, and the sheer volume of years lived. There were aspects of Poppy I enjoyed, but she felt two-dimensional in terms of her mental health rep, and the power she could have conveyed - hello, Death? Could have been awesome.

But I didn’t feel like these were gods, just children navigating a world were dimensions and past lives and elemental/magical powers existed. I wanted to love them, and thought at times the on-page representation of all the lives lived was wonderful, but it didn’t translate to how they interacted with each other well enough.

Plot
Essentially, the plot could be great. I would have LOVED a tale where we eventually get to see the Ether, the other dimension that exists beside their present location. I would have adored a wild chase for artefacts to help Gem and the other characters escape or evade the threats posed by other gods, but that didn’t happen. I would have loved a more epic explosion of events all starting from a trickling realisation that Gem is not just a regular non-binary kid who doesn’t fit in. But again, not what we got. Instead, we got a narrative that stuck itself inside a vacuum centred around a Southern American town called Gracie, and nothing much else happened. For all the talk of incredible power shared between the gods, we didn’t see much more than repetitive stand offs and posturing between the opposing sides. There was an awful lot of talking, and the plot felt seized by inertia thanks to its small town setting - much like the characters did, in the narrative itself. (I love a small town setting as much as anyone else, when it feels claustrophobic and tense, but this was not that.)

Pacing/World-Building
Around the middle of the book is where I got lost. There were too many new character additions too late in the book for them to have any impact on me as a reader, and the method of their introduction (via text??) did not work. Here is also where the majority of the “issues” kicked in for me - poor communication between characters (not deliberately done for YA purposes), not wholly developed character traits, a plot that didn’t really deliver, and too many threads left untied that started to mar my enjoyment of it.

It’s a shame, because this book could have been SO good, and I wanted it to be! There were elements I really enjoyed, so I would eventually to see how things go from here. This is a great queer centric narrative, at least, with fun elements and characters I’d have enjoyed reading when I was younger.

Sadly I have to make the decision to not finish reading this book at about the halfway point. This book has started to feel like a chore to read and I never want my reading to be something tiresome. I really wanted to love this book, but I don't.

There are two main issues with this book: Pacing and likability of the characters.

Even halfway into this book, I do not feel like we got beyond the introductory part of the story. Throughout the book Gem, the main character, slowly gets their memory back. Because of this it feels like we are still missing crucial information to understand this story and truly get started. The pacing of the story supports this perception.

The main character Gem is a morally grey character. This can be interesting and is full of potential especially, in my opinion, in a fantasy setting. This potential was not utilised well. While it creates some mystery around the character, especially concerning their history, in the present it really just makes them irritating and unlikeable. This probably was the intention, but I as a reader do not like that. Motivation and more of an understanding of where the character's behaviours stem from is missing. I feel like the book hides behind the fact that Gem is a god and that is enough of an explanation. Maybe that will become clearer in the rest of the book, but for now it makes my reading experience pretty miserable. The most likeable character, Enzo, is treated unreasonably bad by Gem and it's just so frustrating. The other characters either do not have enough depth yet, or the ones that we do somewhat know are not characters that I particularly enjoy reading about.

I'm really sad that this book didn't do it for me. I really wanted to like it. The premise sounded perfect. I liked Edgmon's other books. But in the end it this was not an enjoyable read.

I finished this novel very recently and wow, I love it!

This novel follows Gem, who recently found out that they are a reincarnated god and is immediately thrust into an eternal conflict involving other reincarnated gods.

My immediate thoughts:
- I love the inclusivity, diversity and overall representation that is included throughout the novel.
- I absolutely LOVE the concept of reincarnated gods living in the 21st century.
- There is plenty of development, action and discussions about some very important topics.

This is easily a 4.5 star read and I cannot wait for the sequel!

A full review will be published on my blog later this month.

Godly Heathens is an explosive, vivid, trans, queer, morally grey, dark rollercoaster of a ride! I’ve not read anything by H.E. Edgmon before but, now I’m hooked! Each and every character is morally grey and the epitome of messy, vicious, angry, emotional whirlwinds!

Gem Echols in a non-binary Seminole teen who lives in small-town Gracie, Georgia – a back end of nowhere, small (in all senses of the word,) swampy, southern town, where they just don’t fit in. They are struggling with life, anxiety and an all-consuming fear that they are just as mentally ill as their father, a gap they try to fill by being what their peers want, including a vessel for sexual flings that only serve to exacerbate their feelings of loneliness and separateness. The only person who comes close to knowing them is Enzo, another trans teen who lives far, far away in Brooklyn. Gem dreams of a future post-school with Enzo but, still doesn’t dare to share the whole truth with them about their feelings, dreams and fears.

In the midst of this struggle, Gem encounters a new student at their school, Willa Mae, whose arrival triggers a tsunami of physical and emotional events, and breaks the news to Gem that not only are they soulmates but, they are also gods from another dimension/world. From this point the pace increases in speed exponentially, Gem is in the midst of a tornado that just keeps spinning faster and faster as Gem’s eyes and mind are opened to a whole new world of gods and monsters.

The characters, world building, magic system and plot in Godly Heathens are a gut punch, Edgmon doesn’t hold back from trauma, emotional damage, struggle, death or mutilation. If you have concerns about triggers, there are many (and the author provides a specific list in the intro) but, despite the darkness of the story and the morally grey characterisation, there are moments of levity that truly lift your spirits…I absolutely love the dates in a graveyard.

And the quotes, I can’t not mention these! There are so many quotable sections in this book that I absolutely adored, and whilst I can’t share one of my favourites with you, total spoiler…this was another favourite:

“For all they’d like you to believe otherwise, nature is neither good nor evil. It just is. And it finds a way to survive.”

If you are looking for morally grey characters, a thrilling roller coaster ride that will leave you tilting at the edge of a cliff and that doesn’t fear the challenge of and challenging the trauma of mental illness, true representation, violence, and more, definitely pick up Godly Heathens. I was left gasping at that end and will be picking up the second half of this duology as soon as it is published!

Thank you Daphne Press and NetGalley for the arc of Godly Heathens by H.E. Edgmon in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

I feel genuinely bad for having to DNF this one because there was so much to love here. Ultimately the writing style just wasn’t working for me. It read like one of those teen superhero shows like Batgirl and they’re just not my kind of thing. It was also way too horny for my asexual ass.

The representation was absolutely solid though and the plot was very promising, so this still gets 3 stars from me despite not finishing it.

This book started as a four star but i feel like the quality of the book got worst as the story progressed. The book has a lot of potiential, the idea is great but i feel that this was not the best execution. There are a lot of confusing parts to the story (like the willow mae/rory name change) and i feel like all the gods and the list should have been introduced a litle bit earlier in the story.
Overall the book still feels like a first, maybe second draft and still needs a lot of polishing. I was gifted this copy by NetGalley so the editors can still make changes that would lead this book to be a four maybe even four stars.
Still, the characters were very well built, they were relatable and fun to watch. The conflict that Gem deals with because of his feelings for more than one character is realistic and feels well tought out.
Overall, this book wasnt the best but there is still a chance for the next book in the series to be amaizing

Godly Heathens follows Gem Echols, a nonbinary Seminole teenager who has vivid, magical, terrifying dreams that feel completely real. With the arrival of Willa Mae Hardy, who somehow knows more about Gem than she should, they find themselves thrust into a world they could never have imagined, and it is only their trans best friend, Enzo, whom they want to speak to about it. Considering the fact that Gem finds out they are a reincarnated god, that can't really happen, so they are forced to work with Willa Mae in order the escape the wrath of the Goddess of Death and the other reincarnated gods who are (largely) extremely displeased with their current situation.

This book had everything, from a fast-moving plot to incredible character relationships, not to mention an excellent exploration of queerness, in terms of both gender and sexuality. Gem's Indigenous ancestry plays an important role in their story, and I felt that every topic touched on was done with mastery. As a point of view character, Gem is the perfect mix of funny and determined, making them a joy to follow, even through the darkest of pages. Humanity is explored in a viscerally honest way, and Edgmon asks questions of justice and duty in a way that I rarely see in fiction.

The twists in Godly Heathens didn't always take me by surprise, but that didn't detract from their impact. This is a book that so many people will need and, undoubtedly, treasure, and I cannot wait for the next installment to see where the story takes our favourite godly chaos teens.

Thank you to NetGalley and Daphne Press for approving my request to read an arc of this book

Unfortunately I had to DNF this book or more like I couldn’t start it. The author very kindly provided content warnings on the first page and after reading through them I decided to give this book a miss for my mental health. I don’t feel comfortable reading about sexual assault and definitely not to do with children. I wish that NetGalley would list the authors content warnings on the request page so that the reader knows what kind of book topics they’re getting into before requesting the book.
None of this is the author’s fault though so I’m marking it as four stars so that I don’t hinder the overall rating.