After getting played by her mother in the prequel, you’d think Inez would have learned a thing or two about not trusting people so easily, but in this book she opens herself up to take one metaphorical knife to the back after another.
This book starts with Inez and Whit getting engaged. Even though he’s supposed to marry some wealthy heiress back home, he’s too in love with Inez not to marry her.
But they know Ricardo won’t approve, so they have to get all the necessary paperwork and get through the ceremony without him finding out.
Unfortunately, Ricardo had good reasons for not trusting Whit. Whit’s father is a gambler who has lost the family fortune one card game at a time. If Ricardo doesn’t get his parents the money they need, his sister will be forced to marry some wealthy guy who’s old enough to be her grandfather.
So, yes, Whit takes Inez’s entire fortune without telling her. She has to find out from the banker.
On the other hand, he did it to save his sister. The author wants us to believe that’s a worthy cause, but we’re talking about marriage to a wealthy older man in the late Victorian era. That’s not a bad outcome for a woman of the time without money of her own. All she has to do is wait a few years for him to die and then she gets to live out the rest of her years as an independently wealthy widow. Even a woman with a healthy dowry couldn’t hope for much better.
Also, Whit’s brother claims he extracted a promise from their father not to gamble anymore, but of course promises from an addict are worthless.
So, I’m not buying that Whit’s cause is as noble as he claims. And Inez points out that he could have asked her for the money. He responds she would never have given him the entire fortune, which is true. So it understandably takes the rest of the book (and Whit taking a bullet for her) for Inez to forgive him and agree not to file for divorce.
In the meantime, Arabella from the first book makes a reappearance claiming to be Inez’s half sister. Apparently, in addition to marrying Inez’s father, having Inez, and exploring Egypt, when she wasn’t visiting Inez in Argentina, she apparently had a whole other family in England with another man and another daughter, Arabella. Damn, that woman was busy! And in a time before airplanes! I’d find it impressive if I found it even remotely believable.
And when I say it’s not believable, I don’t mean that Arabella is lying to her. At least not about being her half sister, because she totally is. She is lying about being on her side, and while that’s technically a spoiler, it’s way too obvious for anyone to get mad at me for telling them ahead of time.
Whit doesn’t trust Arabella from the beginning, and tries to warn Inez about her, but Inez is still not willing to listen to him after he stole all her money. While I understand why she doesn’t want to listen to him, that’s no reason to trust Arabella. If anything, you’d think such a recent and huge betrayal would make her less hesitant to trust, but she appears to be incapable of learning from her mistakes.
I would also assume having been played by her mom would make Inez at least a little more hesitant to trust someone who suddenly shows up claiming to be a long-lost family member who just happens to want to help you for reasons that are unclear. Come on, Inez, you’re better than this.
Not only was it frustrating to watch Inez get taken in again, but I found it hard to believe that every, single person in her family except Tio Ricardo is a murderous sociopath. There’s only so much betrayal a girl can take before she realizes she is no judge of character, has no grasp of reality, and if everything is a lie, why bother to continue to live. Take it from someone who has been there and done that.
Anyway, back to the extremely unbelievable plot of this book. The titular library is the great library of Alexandria, which was destroyed millennia ago. They think it’s merely hidden underground, because of course it is. And of course they find their way to it, with a little help from visions of Cleopatra Inez keeps getting that just happen to lead her to the library’s current location, and also Cleopatra’s recipe for creating gold out of a few basic ingredients. But all that gets buried in the ridiculousness that is one person after another stabbing poor Inez in the back because she’s so willing to trust everyone, even after they have proven untrustworthy.