Edith Hamilton’s Greek gods are back, and they’ve brought all their glorious tomfoolery with them. Forget the toga-wearing residents of mount Olympus you think you know, they’ve kept up with the times and are living communally in a Manhattan high-rise. No more antiquated names for them either, now they sport hipster-ish new nicknames like Dita, Heff and Perry. Some things never change though; the Gods still screw with human lives for amusement. Dear in Headlights takes the archetypal girl afraid of love and the bad-boy musician and throws in an interesting dash of ambrosia. To stave off boredom, Aphrodite and Apollo enter in to a competition. Aphrodite has to get Lex and Dean to fall in love while Apollo tries to keep them apart. This book is really two stories in one: the story of the Gods and the story of Lex and Dean with the occasional God-like observation thrown in. What makes a romance novel great is the conflict and tension arising from the relationship of the main characters. When the story depends on two characters falling in love, the reasons given need to be believable. Unfortunately, the falling in love phase of this book was weak. In the real world song lyrics and common interests may draw us to another person, but they don’t equal love (I hope not anyway). Normally, an unbelievable relationship would kill a romance novel for me, but this book offers such a fresh twist on the genre that I almost didn’t notice. With an automaton puppy named Bisoux, vinyl records, rock stars, tons of pop culture references and really old-fashioned vendettas, this book was a witty frolic from the first page to the last.
