I can’t remember how I stumbled across this book by Isabel Ibañez, whether I saw it on a list somewhere, or Goodreads, or just my library app. It might be one that I found while scrolling through my library app, fell in love with the description, only to have the app tell me the waitlist was a million years long.
So I put myself on the waitlist and it turned out I had to wait slightly less than a million years before it became available.
It’s so good!
The description calls it “The Mummy” meets Death on the Nile, and I think that’s pretty accurate. There is a plucky young woman who knows a lot about ancient Egypt and is determined to explore some tombs, which definitely kept reminding me of the “The Mummy”. And there’s a swoony white guy who could totally be played by a young Brendan Fraser.
The main character and narrator of this story is Inez Olivera, who has been raised in high society in Bueno Aires in the late nineteenth century. Her parents both spend most of their time digging for ancient artifacts in Egypt, leaving her to be raised by her aunt. Inez is desperate to join her parents on their adventures, but has to content herself with the gifts they send and the stories they tell her on their rare, brief visits home.
Shortly before her nineteenth birthday, Inez gets a gift of a gold ring from her father, but no note attached. She then receives a letter from her uncle Ricardo that her parents have both died, leaving her as their sole heir and him as manager of her estate until she marries.
Tio Ricardo is also an Egyptian historian and archeologist who was working with Inez’s parents up until they died.
When Inez arrives in Cairo, rather than finding Tio Ricardo waiting for her, she finds his assistant, a white, British man named Whit waiting for her so he can put her on a boat headed right back to Argentina. Ricardo has absolutely not intention of letting his niece hang around and get in his way and get herself into trouble.
Unfortunately for him, Inez has absolutely no intention of leaving Egypt without an adventure of her own. So she manages to slip past Whit and get to the hotel where her parents had been staying. Luckily for her, they were paid up through the end of the month, so the hotel manager lets her stay in their room.
Inez gets dressed for dinner and surprises her uncle by joining him and some of his investors for dinner. Of course, he isn’t happy to see her, and Whit apologizes for letting her slip through his fingers, but at that point, he can’t very well refuse her dinner.
So she joins them, and through their conversation, realizes they are looking for Cleopatra’s tomb. So of course that makes her more determined than ever to tag along.
But Ricardo is still determined to get Inez out of Egypt, so he arranges for her to leave by the next boat to Argentina,
But Inez is still determined to stay. After two more failed attempts to get rid of her, Inez manages to sneak onto Ricardo’s boat sailing down the Nile to the suspected location of the tomb of the last Pharaoh of Egypt. She hides out as one of the crew, and by the time her uncle recognizes her, it’s too late to send her anywhere. He’s really not happy about it, but he’s stuck with her.
Throughout all this, Tio Ricardo is suspiciously tight-lipped about how, exactly, his sister and brother-in-law died. At one point, Inez finds a letter among her mother’s things saying she’s afraid of her own brother, suggesting he might be violent and pointing the finger at him as her murderer.
At this point, I would like to say that every book needs an evil Tio Ricardo. All that was missing was the twirling moustache. Although, given the time period, he probably had a moustache that either was never mentioned or not mentioned enough.
But this book is full of twists and turns, so as soon as Inez starts to suspect foul play on the part of her uncle, signs start to pop up that he might not be so evil after all. At this point, I am going to dive head first into SPOILER TERRITORY so consider yourself warned.
Not only did Ricardo not kill his sister or brother-in-law, it turns out his sister isn’t even dead. Instead, she manages to meet up with Inez and convince her that she had to fake her death to escape Ricardo, who really did kill Inez’s dad. She also convinces Inez to steal as many artifacts as she can from Cleopatra’s tomb (yes, they do find it) and sneak them to her.
When she’s scheduled to secretly meet up with Inez and take her away from her evil Tio Ricardo, Inez arrives at the rendezvous location just in time to see her mother sailing off with someone else.
Turns out her mother played her. She was never in danger from her brother and she was using Inez to get to the artifacts her brother would never let her anywhere near so she can take them to Cairo and sell them on the black market.
At this point, Inez has no choice but to return to her uncle and confess everything. Of course, he’s furious, but Whit stands up for her. The mother she thought was dead came back and asked for her help. Who wouldn’t be susceptible to such a ploy?
Also, her uncle lied to her about everything. If he had just come clean with her from the beginning about what really happened with her parents, none of this would have happened.
Nevertheless, not only is Ricardo still mad at his niece, once they get back to Cairo, they get word that his other niece, who was raised alongside Inez like a sister, has disappeared. Turns out she followed Inez to Cairo, so of course they find her wandering around the city just as they’re about to head back to Argentina to try and help look for her.
I thought it was pretty funny that, after resisting her uncle’s attempts to send her back home, as soon as her cousin shows up, all Inez wants to do is send her back home immediately. Yet that irony appeared to have been lost on her.
But it was not for nothing that Inez worried about her safety, because her cousin gets mistaken for Inez and kidnapped by people who want the treasure Inez’s mother has. They are convinced Inez is her mother’s weakness and that she will show up to save her daughter. This gives Inez the same conviction/hope.
Unfortunately, not only does her mother not show up, but her cousin gets killed, she and Whit almost die after getting locked in a tomb together and left for dead, only to be rescued by Ricardo.
And of course it’s as they think they’re about to die that they confess the feelings they both obviously have for each other.
I have to admit, my heart broke for Inez every time her mother let her down. How can a woman do that to her own child?
On the other hand, Inez finds a note by her father that suggests he might still be alive because he tells her to “never stop looking for me.” That makes me think that’s going to be the focus of the next sequel, which I cannot wait to read!