Percy Jackson has saved the world multiple times - battling monsters, Titans, even death himself - so graduating high school should be a piece of cake, right? Wrong.
Percy needs three college recommendation letters from the gods before his final school year comes to an end. Percy and his friends Annabeth and Grover must pet-sit for the goddess Hecate while she's away over Halloween week.
They just need to follow her simple rules. But when Grover's curiosity gets the better of him, the friends find themselves with a giant goat, a destroyed mansion, and Hecate's terrifying and potentially deadly pets on the loose in New York City.
The trio have only days to find the pets and restore the mansion to order - or face the full fury of Hecate and her horrifying three-heads.
Author Rick Riordan delivers another adventure featuring Percy and his friends. The three friends, Percy, Annabeth and Grover, are delightful as ever, with their friendship a bright spark within the pages. Grover's growth as a character was an added bonus, with the satyr no longer feeling like a third-wheel to Percy and Annabeth.
However, it feels like Riordan has lost his shine a little with this book. While the earlier books were edgier and refreshing, it feels like this story has been written for a younger audience to capitalise on the television adaptations. There's way too much toilet humour and Percy has lost his oomph by becoming a shell of himself.
While Riordan included popular culture references within his earlier stories, this time round they stood out more than I remembered. The timeline was very skewed, with references to Texas Hold Em by Beyonce, Barbie and White Chicks, alongside unrealistic AI and TikTok, among other things. This also means the story has the potential to become dated quite quickly.
The pace is bumpy, with parts of the book really dragging. Overall, this story could probably have sufficed as a short story, rather than a full-blown novel.
For fans of the Percy Jackson series, this book has the potential to be very divisive. Some will be swept up in the nostalgia hit, while others, like myself, will view the latest adventure as a shadow of its former self.
Reviewer: Rebekah Lyell
Penguin Random House