Bolivian Argentinian Inez Olivera belongs to the glittering upper society of nineteenth-century Buenos Aires, and like the rest of the world, the town is steeped in old-world magic that’s been largely left behind or forgotten. Inez has everything a girl might want, except for the one thing she yearns for the most: her globetrotting parents, who frequently leave her behind.
When she receives word of their tragic deaths, Inez inherits their massive fortune and a mysterious guardian, an archaeologist in partnership with his Egyptian brother-in-law. Yearning for answers, Inez sails to Cairo, bringing her sketch pads and a golden ring her father sent to her for safekeeping before he died. But upon her arrival, the old-world magic tethered to the ring pulls her down a path where she discovers there’s more to her parents’ disappearance than what her guardian led her to believe.
With her guardian’s infuriatingly handsome assistant thwarting her at every turn, Inez must rely on ancient magic to uncover the truth about her parents’ disappearance – or risk becoming a pawn in a larger game that will kill her.
The Mummy meets Death on the Nile in this lush, immersive historical fantasy filled with adventure, a rivals-to-lovers romance, and shocking twists and turns.
To Whom It May Concern –
I am often wary of books described as “Such-and-Such meets This Franchise,” and a blurb declaring this book “The Mummy meets Death on the Nile” made me highly suspicious indeed. However, alternatively, if done right it was a combination that held a lot of potential, so I was cautiously optimistic. But then I began reading reviews that were highly conflicting: either people loved it or people hated it with a passion – and my cautious optimism crumbled into cautious dread.
Feelings of dread have always been proven correct where books are concerned.
Inez has always wanted to join her archeologist parents in their yearly, six-month-long trips to Egypt. Her father has always encouraged her interest and love for the country that steals her parents’ attention away, and yet her continued pleas to join them is met with steadfast refusal. So Inez sits and broods in Buenos Aires at her aunt’s house – until one day her father sends her a package with a ring in it, no explanation given, and soon after her parents go missing, assumed to be dead. Inez does the only sensible thing and boards a boat to Egypt, determined to find out the truth. There, she meets her uncle’s assistant Whit – and this is where everything goes wrong.
The only ting worse than a book that is bad from beginning to end, is a bad book that held potential. The premise is, honestly, quite good – and I won’t fault Inez for her immediate decision to go straight to Egypt, because adventures don’t happen to characters who dither for too long. But arriving in Egypt is promptly where all of the annoyances begin. We’re served up a heaping dish of anti-colonialism so thick it could be used as a crème sauce – and is decidedly one-sided. The British are evil – and now that I think of it, there isn’t a single good English character they meet, and Whit doesn’t count; they’re all unanimously crooked, weak, chauvinistic, and rude. There’s a prevailing portrayal that all Egyptians cared deeply about their country’s history, totally ignoring the many tomb-robbers of native origin.
Adventures should not be bogged down with endless, monotonous, one-sided brow-beating politics.
Shockingly, though, I could have swallowed even this if it weren’t for Whit, and Inez’s immediate falling for his Baby Blues – by which I refer to both his eyes and his shirt, because we can neither be permitted to forget that his shirt matches his eyes, nor the fact that he is a muscled hunk of whisky-marinated man steak. The dude constantly reeks of whisky – and not cinnamon – and this is meant to be sexy. Inez’s automatic head-over-heels aside, Whit himself is quite simply annoying all on his own. There is a way to write a character haunted by his past, and Whit is not it. Whit being totally unemotional, uncaring, and closed off is reiterated so often that I felt like it was being nailed directly into my skull – and it had to be repeated with good reason, because Whit was so emotional he was one “How was your day?” away from sobbing out his life’s story.
We all thought Edward Cullen was moody and broody, but I do believe Whit has successfully taken that title. He brooded at sandhills if there wasn’t a person nearby or a bottle of whisky at hand. His mood swings gave a whiplash so bad it left more than my neck stiff. My eyes were left loose in their sockets for the amount of eye-rolling I did every time Whit sulked over his “deep, dark, tortured past” or clenched his jaw and ground his teeth (there was a lot of jaw-clenching and teeth-grinding, and not all of it from me). There are people one occasionally meets who insist – quite embarrassingly – that the world does not understand them because they are simply too tortured and too mysterious. Whit and Baby Blues probably give personal coaching on how to embody this sort of personality.
It need hardly be stated that the romance between him and Inez was simply awful. It was so bad that I actually begged the book to have a plot twist of Inez ending up with Isabel instead – and if anyone has been around my book opinions long enough, then one knows that I am no fan of same-sex relationships. But in this instance, I’d have taken it over Whit. Every element of it was positively obnoxious; the lusting, the “oh, I hate you, but really I don’t,” the “oh, I’m dangerous, stay away, but actually don’t,” the up-and-down, the quips that were meant to be funny but fell oh-so-flat – all of it. I nearly beat my head in over the absurdly-contrived scene when Whit must help Inez lace her corset, because Inez can’t possibly do it herself. Corsets laces were and are long enough for a woman to lace herself up; no assistance required. This scene was absolutely egregious in its conception; it is a literary crime.
Added to this atrocity were somewhat out of place elements. We’re introduced to Isabel and her father, whose appearance in the story is really made out as if they’ll be a big deal, but they really aren’t. Isabel’s father is portrayed as being very chauvinistic, ignoring his daughter and telling her what to do – and yet they are described as having a very close relationship and Isabel carries a gun, none of which aligned with this “controlling dad” narrative.
And then there were the artifacts imbued with magic. Here is the wonderful thing about archeological adventure fiction: it is perfectly acceptable, even expected, for there to be one or two items which turn out to be magical – generally these items are either the artifact the story revolves around, or the artifact that serves as a catalyst. Absolutely nothing else in the story need be magical, and it won’t be out of place. So, for instance, the ring Inez’s father sends her works perfectly fine – it imbues Inez with visions of Cleopatra (because yes, naturally they must be searching for Egypt’s “misunderstood queen”). However, there’s also just flatout random things that also have magic – like ancient sandals that work like torches, a necktie that gives out hot water, a trunk that’s full of dish water. It’s weird and tries to establish a “magic law” that is totally unnecessary. And no, it does not add charm.
The story trundled along, primarily surrounding everyone’s constant attempt to send Inez back to where she came from (literally no one wants her on the expedition, and I agree with them), and Inez finding ways to thwart them – which got old very, very quickly. It made some half-hearted attempt to create a sense of mystery and foul play and “who can she trust?” but was rather painfully transparent and also led to some seriously contrived revelations regarding Whit and why she should stay away from him. There was only one moment towards the end that did surprise me, but not enough to induce me to read the sequel – especially not after that awful bait ending.
In short, What the River Knows is not like Death on the Nile and is not like The Mummy. No hundreds-year-old corpses are resurrected to tear of Whit’s face, for one thing. And to even hint at a suggestion that Whit and Inez are even remotely like Evie and O’Connel is sacrilege. This book left me wishing to claw out my eyes, poke out my eardrums, and gnaw off my thumbs.
With Deepest Critical Regards,
M. A.
The Bluestocking Biblio Buttery 