The Nile Knows Everything

I recently finished reading What The River Knows by Isabel Ibañez. This is book #1 in the Secrets of the Nile series.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

  Rating: 3.25/5 stars

"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 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 archeologist in partnership with his Egyptian brother-in-law. Yearning for answers, Inez sails to Cairo, bringing her sketch pads and an ancient 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 soon discovers there’s more to her parent’s 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 parent’s disappearance—or risk becoming a pawn in a larger game that will kill her."

First off, I did love how this was set in Egypt. I certainly enjoyed the setting this book was placed in. Inez is a brave character who regardless of her situation, pursues to find the answers she is looking for. She wouldn’t take no for an answer even though women in that time period did get that choice.

I love the idea of this being historical fiction with a hint of magic in the ancient Egypt artifacts. It gives a hint of whimsy in a setting set in the past.

The things I didn’t like too much without ruining the story for other readers. I didn’t get a lot of magic. It was just a touch of those elements that left me wanting more of it. The pacing was slow in this one. Nothing was really happening throughout the book. Yes, there were some dangerous elements to it. But it was few and far between. This storyline just dragged and wasn’t exciting.

Yes, there was a mystery behind her parent's death but there wasn’t much of Inez actually solving that mystery. There was a lot of I am not going to tell you what happened and her figuring out the mystery only because someone finally gave her some details. It was infuriating that a mystery wasn’t really being solved. It was just people constantly telling her that they were not going to tell her anything and her eventually getting details over time.

Now, I wasn’t fully convinced of the chemistry between Whit and Inez. Their conversations were between them, “I am not going to tell you,” “That's not true,” “I trust that person” and “Don’t call me by my surname.” Over and over again. No real depth to their conversations that left me wondering why they were drawn together. I wasn’t convinced basically.

Overall it was fine, but it could have been so much more!

Check out What the River Knows, and find out what the river actually knows.

Happy Reading :)