I didn't love this book. It was an easy read, the type of thing I'd read on a beach vacation. I found the characters to be pretty unlikeable and without a lot of substance, which made it difficult to invest in.

Willa just wasn't my favorite character, and I had some issues with the writing structure. The story itself was interesting, though a bit on the sexual side.

Willa is coming if age, during the 1950’s, in British Columbia. Her mother has recently remarried, bringing along two boys of his own—Patrick and Kenneth.

Both Willa, and her older sister Joan, connect with the boys in different ways, but the story focuses on the intermittent, inappropriate, and borderline sadistic interactions between Willa and Patrick.

Over the course of a decade, the two slowly, but surely, increase the stakes of their twisted game. The result is something akin to a game of chicken; you’re just waiting to see who will fold first.

While the story was readable, in a sloooooooowwwww burn sort of way, it was still slow. I didn’t connect with any of the characters, and found the vast majority of them to be vapid and dull.

Sure they were living the “good life”, but the facade was so disgustingly visible (on everyone’s faces), it was almost painful to experience.

Willa was forced to enter a perverse world, with little in the way of guidance, and she did so in an unhealthy manner. Her relationship with Patrick (a couple of years older than her) was sadistic at best, masochistic at worst, but she was far too young to realize the pawn she was until things came to a dangerous head for them both.

I suppose, if you tried, you could make a character study of a few of the main characters—Joan, in particular—but there was nothing here that made me feel invested enough to go beyond the words on the page.

By the end, I no longer cared about any of them, and wondered silently why I even wasted the time.

Willa only sees her unofficial step brother, Patrick, a few times throughout her life, but these meetings profoundly impact her life.

I have so many conflicting feelings about this book. The writing is beautiful. The fantastic descriptions of Mid Century fashion, design and architecture add a layer of authenticity to the text. Willa's interactions with Patrick range from disturbing to downright disgusting. While these events are necessary to the story, they hampered my enjoyment. While I found the book engrossing, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Despite my misgivings, Robertson is a very talented writer and I look forward to reading more of her work.

Interesting look at teenagers in 1950s and 60s Canada but the sexual part of it left me cold. Nothing good comes from Willa's relationship with Patrick. Nothing. Unlike some others, I didn't have an issue with the writing structure. This just wasn't for me. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Demi-Gods was an interesting novel for me to read. The reader follows Willa and a long journey through her life. I genuinely liked seeing her grow up. I felt her aging with the turn of every page, and I liked how she had so many interesting times in her childhood years. The book itself was very quirky. It talks about parts of Willa’s childhood and later years that you don’t often see. However, this book was a little confusing at times. I just didn’t always fully understand what was going on, but that could just be my own issue. Another problem I had was that the writing fell flat and boring at times. Sometimes the book would be very interesting and I would fly through the pages. Other times the book would be less interesting and it took forever before the pages started to go by. Again, this could just be a personal problem. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a window to the past to watch a young girl growing up.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This is an uncomfortable coming of age story. There's many, MANY instances of disturbing sexual behaviour. Anxiety, secrets, shame....

Willa is a 9 year old girl on the cusp of change. She meets her cousins/step-brothers and connects with Patrick - who is a troublemaker with a capitol T.

This is the story of sexual exploration and relationships and satisfaction.

It's uncomfortable. It's dangerous. It's unsettling. This is a page turner.

A drearily monotone novel that elegantly goes not much of anywhere.

I received an advanced readers copy of this book in exchange for an honest review .
The story is beautifully and artfully told , but I just couldn't connect to the narrative. This may be because I cannot relate to the protagonist's adolescent sexual experiences – or it could be that the emotion does not translate through the unconventional writing style.
I'll be eager to see what others think of this book closer to release. I really wanted to like it, as I usually enjoy stories of girl's sexual coming of age. But I just didn't feel any emotions here. And if there's one thing teenagers bring to everything they do, it's emotions. This felt more like an exercise than a novel.

Eliza Robertson’s debut novel “Demi-Gods” is an experience — like that of a total eclipse of the sun, both frightening and awe-inspiring as the moon swallows the sun, suddenly overpowering her daylight with his darkness.

“Demi-Gods'” sun is Patrick and its “changeling” moon Willa (or perhaps it’s the other way around), step-siblings living in mirror border towns by the sea — “one nudging the forty-ninth parallel, the other a twenty-minute cab ride to Tijuana.”

Like the sun and the moon, they chased each other out of the sky and didn’t exist in each other’s universes except for those six rare fleeting instances of totality between 1950 and 1961 — when they happen to be in the same time and place because of circumstances out of their control.

The first time happened in 1950 when Willa was nine and Patrick 11. Willa’s mother and Patrick’s father Eugene brought them together in Willa’s family’s beach house in Salt Springs Island, British Columbia. Willa got stung by a jellyfish and Patrick offered to pee on her arm to numb the pain (she wouldn’t let him, but peed on herself while Patrick listened) and dared Willa to intentionally poop in her underwear as collateral to hold their secrets.

The second time happened in 1953 when Willa was 12 and Patrick 14. Patrick’s older brother and Eugene’s son Kenneth brought the family together in San Diego because he was graduating high school. Willa’s mom and Patrick’s dad were still seeing each other. While the step-siblings were at the hotel pool, Patrick intentionally went into the girl’s changing room while Willa was showering and masturbated to the sight of her boobs.

The subsequent meetings are similarly dark and perverted — as if you were reading whispered taboo secrets or hearing the sea’s soft shhhhhhhhhhhh’s.

“Events between him and me seemed to occur on another membrane, which pulsed, here and there, into the membrane we all occupied, but which contracted when a third person entered the room,” wrote Robertson from Willa’s first person confessional. “I remembered our interactions as I remembered a dream, with doubt, and if I mentioned that night to him, I expected him to look at me questioningly. I didn’t trust that my subconscious hadn’t invented the whole thing.”

So Willa and Patrick became each other’s half-remembered suns and moons — stealing secrets from their imprinted shadows even though they barely knew the other, “thinking about memory as a space we dwell in.”

And so they basked in each other’s borrowed light, both compelled and disgusted by the power they had over the other, thinking about how “‘scared’ was an anagram of ‘sacred.'”

Robertson’s prose is intentionally blurry, using pronouns instead of names and lacking quotation marks so you’re never sure when Patrick’s speech begins and Willa’s ends.

Instead, Robertson challenges dualities, immortalizing Patrick and Willa through both beautifully poetic and vulgar prose.

With “Demi-Gods,” Robertson writes a new myth, rivaling Psyche and Cupid’s, Oedipus and Jocasta’s, Castor and Pollux’s and Cronus and Zeus’s. Her “demi-gods” Patrick and Willa can instill fear, turn day into night and blind you if they meet.

Disclaimer: I received a free eARC of “Demi-Gods” by Eliza Robertson from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.

“Demi-Gods” held my interest, but wasn’t exactly what I was expecting from the summary. It was well written and I liked the characters, but there was just too much going on in the novel.

A very compelling novel about two sisters, one named Willa who we follow closely as she continues a strange and sexual relationship with Patrick, her brother-in-law and family friend. It is beautifully written, with a few good surprises, but mostly left me a bit underwhelmed. I loved the imagery of California in the 1950s and 1960s, and I think the author did a wonderful job of exploring a sexual awakening with a boy, man, whom the protagonist only sees once or twice a year. It flows nicely, and spans a large amount of time, but it didn't draw me in as much as I hoped it would.

I’m back......( the first part of my review is on Goodreads):

Please forgive my blunt-crudeness- but at ‘first glance’ —on the surface —I said to myself: ( half joking - but not far from the truth) - that this is an:
All-In-The-Family-F#%k-Fest Story:

The mother’s live-in boyfriend, Eugene, is her ex-husband’s brother: her daughters uncle.
The oldest daughter, Joan, has hooked up with her Eugene’s oldest son, Kenneth.
Willa, the younger sister, has hooked up with Eugene’s youngest son, Patrick..( 2 years older than Willa).
Luke, the little brother of Joan and Willa, is the only person in this family not hooking up with a extended family member. He tags along though at times.

So...setting aside - that the couple- hookups each share a similar pattern....following mom’s example— this story belongs to Willa.

We first meet Willa when she’s 9 years old.....in Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.
She’s an extremely observant child. As narrator she begins her story with this sentence:
“We must have met the brothers in 1950, because USA had defeated England in the FIFA World Cup. They arrived with the sun in them, their bodies hard and tan like peanuts, eyes chlorine blue—“

Kenneth was handsome. “I knew he and my sister loved each other when she made him a daisy chain and he tucked it in the pocket of his shorts”.

“I wondered if Patrick and I loved each other. He had carved cheeks, a hairless chest and floral lips, like he had been sucking on a sweet”.

“He wore a white T-shirt stuffed into his jeans, which he had rolled around his knees. With the cigarette hanging from his mouth, he look like a hobo from the desert who hunted rattlesnakes and skinned them for boots.”

Willa’s irritation might have been increasing the longer she spent time with Patrick - with good reason - but at 9 years of age she wanted to win his approval too. When Patrick asks Willa to do something embarrassing and quite disturbing.....
Willa’s reaction was twofold: sinful and pleasurable.
She says: “The vulgarity of the action made me want to laugh —it excited me in a strange way”.
Willa had one of those summers - at age 9 - that both scared her and excited her sexually.

Puberty can be a confusing time - which it was for Willa too.
We watch Willa grow- the different stages - off to college - etc.
But it was that her early -age - fascination Willa had with sex- her own desire - in the 1950’s ....
.....mixed with anxiety......associated with a shameful-secretive afternoon - a powerful game that she followed.....that might have created a permanent unconscious confusing kinky-sexual-brain-path.
That one summer......
.......those memories may have -in all likelihood- did have - a direct influence on her sexual behaviors into her adult life. We get to see just how powerful young sexual experiences can affect a person’s sense of self from body satisfaction- to sexual relationships- which can be attributed to early adolescence sexual activity.

The boys lived in San Diego, California with their mother. Three years later is ‘another’ summer. This time in sunny California— at the boys house.

A lot of life experiences took place during the summers in both British Columbia and California —- with lovely descriptive sentences-
some uncomfortable scenes to read —-
Strangely erotic scenes—
Thought provoking interesting novel - outlandish -unsettling- page turning curiosity
Coming of age —
Not a typical 50’s mother - or typical family - but real - and raw

Many wonderful lines. Here’s one I like. Willa is talking about she and her sister, Joan:
“We could sit spine to spine and align our backs and fill the notches of each other‘s vertebrae. Our bodies had matured together like trees. Two trees shoveled into the same soil, competing for sun, limbs warped and forking, needles interlocked”.

I was left with questions about the girls father… and even his relationship with his wife and brother.....but I didn’t mind not having all the answers. I like figuring these things out myself!

Loved this kooky-unconventional novel.

Thank You Netgalley, Bloomsbury Publishing, and Eliza Robertson