Oh. My. Gods.

Shades of Percy Jackson! Phoebe Castro's mother gets married to the headmaster of an exclusive private school located on a remote island in Greece and has to relocate there, only to find that the school is populated with the children of the ancient Greek gods. Phoebe has a hard time of it, since she isn't one and is therefore given a hard time by her snotty step sister and some of the other students. She keeps up with her cross country running in order to be able to get a college scholarship and escape all of the problems in Greece, but along the way makes a few friends and comes to terms with who she really is.

A worthy first attempt, but I wouldn't buy it on its strengths as a mythologically oriented book. A little too trite in that respect-- the descendants of Hades are Goths, for example. Too easy. Since my daughter runs cross country, I was looking forward to that part of it (and it's a major part), but the racing and training scenes were just slightly off-- I checked the author's web site, and it does turn out that she doesn't run.

I will sneak this one in as part of my romance book buy to keep my insatiable "pink" readers in books, since the romance/school/ general teen angst parts of the books were quite fun. The cover alone would sell this one in my library, and it will be a good choice for readers who aren't really interested in mythology, sort of like sneaking zucchini into brownies. There is a sequel coming out in spring of 2009.

http://www.teralynnchilds.com/index.htm