Goddess of Yesterday

Outstanding novel about the origins of the Trojan War told from an unusual perspective. Central character is a very intelligent and courageous tween girl who lives through dangerous adventures but ultimately has a HEA ending. GODDESS OF YESTERDAY is very well researched. Although it is aimed at the YA market, it is commendably frank regarding the horrors of war, slavery, rape, and human sacrifice in bronze age Greece. Accordingly I do not recommended it for readers less than high school age. Adults with an interest in Ancient Greece will also enjoy it. My only criticism - also shared by another reviewer - is that the character of Helen is very one dimensional. Why is she so evil?

If you're a mythology geek, this is the book for you. I first read it in high school, then picked it up again a few years later. Although it may be listed as a "children's book" it has incredibly mature themes and intense characters. I love the author's portrayal of Helen, Menelaus, and the rest. I'd recommend purchasing the hard-back, mostly because the cover art is so applicable to the book. The cover art of the paperback is lame (like whoever picked it/created it had never read the book). 100% recommend. I don't read many books twice, but I did with this one. I bought it off of Amazon for a friend for Christmas (another mythology nerd) and she loved it.

This book was great. It didn't try to retell the Trojan War, but it did a great job of re-imagining what led up to it. It was full of detail. As a Classicist, I could appreciate the imagination that went into this. My only dislike was that Helen felt stereotypical and flat to me as a character, whereas the rest of the characters were so vibrant and real. However, a few factors could have contributed to the decision to write Helen that way, and in the end I chose to accept the author's choice here, not as wrong but simply as not my preferred representation of Helen.

A great book, I read this book long ago and it was even better than I remembered. And to realize all the places are real and most characters are based on the real/ myth story was very interesting!! 10/10 would definitely recommend to anyone who loves history and a good book!

One of the best stories I've read. Wish the author would do a follow up on the the main character. Well worth the money.

I honestly didn't think that this book was something to get very excited about. The plot was very slow moving and I noticed that the author puts in details that we don't really need to know. In my opinion, Caroline B. Cooney didn't do a really good job of keeping the reader's attention. I also didn't like how horrible things continued to happen to the main character, Anaxandra, forcing her to lie and cheat in order to survive. Despite all these things, I gave the book three stars out of five because I liked finding out how the Ancient Greeks lived and about the gods that they worshiped. When I read about what was actually true in the book, I thought that it was really clever of Caroline B. Cooney to be able to work all these facts into the book. I wouldn't exactly recommend it to anybody who wants everything in the book to be true, it is an historical fiction book after all. I would probably recommend it to someone like me who doesn't know that much about Greek history and is simply looking for an interesting book to read.

My 10 year old daughter had to read for English class on green subject matter. I read it also and we both loved it!

I really liked this book! It was a little confusing and hard to follow at times and there's a lot of names to keep track of. I loved at the end how her hair grows back and she gets to go to Eunus the man that she loved

I really loved this book! It gives a really good view of the story of Helen and Paris, and it follows the brave heroine Anaxandra. The characters are strong and seem to have a real personality. It is heartwarming in some places and really sad in others, and definitley worth a read. Not to be confused with "On the Seas to Troy" which is the same book under a different title and cover. 5 stars!

Excellent school award