Daughter of the God-King by Anne Cleeland

Daughter of the God-King
Anne Cleeland
Sourcebooks Landmark, 368 pgs
November 5^th, 2013
Netgalley

Official Summary

Hattie Blackhouse is the only child of famous Egyptologists, and when they go missing, she travels to their latest excavation in ancient Thebes only to discover that she is attracting interest from the French, the British, and the Egyptians, who believe her the reincarnation of a long-dead princess.

In the second book in the Regency series, the heroine finds herself in the crosshairs of factions who are vying to support or thwart Napoleon’s latest attempt at world domination—and she unknowingly holds the key.

My Thoughts

This novel felt a bit scattered to me.  Hattie Blackhouse leaves the home she grew up in to travel to Paris because she’s convinced she should marry her former neighbor and childhood friend, Robbie.  Turns out he’s engaged (but it’s a weird situation).  Seconds later she stumbles into another man, the mysterious Perry, and is immediately attracted to him.  

While in Paris ominous things start happening and everyone from government officials, to Robbie, to Perry, want her to tell them everything she knows about her missing parents and their work without telling her anything.  All of this is happening while Napolean is in exile in Elba. 

She “escapes” to Egypt to find her parents (who have not been much of a part of her life).  They are archeologists and have discovered a sarcophagus that they believe to be the daughter of the God-King, Seti.   And it kinda seems like the curse of the Tomb is true because people involved keep disappearing or dying.    Perry anticipates her escape to Egypt and is on the same boat leaving Paris.  Hattie gets to Egypt and it’s pretty much the same story – everyone wants info from her but no one will tell her anything.

And I’m bored of summarizing now…I was fairly bored reading it too.  The history of the tombs was woven into the story fairly well I think, but I personally I just wasn’t interested.  I felt the romance was poorly executed.   Hattie starts the book in pursuit of Robbie and quickly changes devotion to Perry (kind of a reverse Romeo).    Hattie would go from distrust of Perry to flirtatiously teasing him in the same paragraph.   Then for no reason whatsoever she decided that he’s trustworthy.     And I spent the rest of the book sort of hoping he would betray her cause giving your trust to someone who won’t tell you anything is just stupid.

I wasn’t aware that this was the second book of a series until I pulled the official summary just now (I requested it from Netgalley cause I liked the title) and I briefly wondered if part of the reason Daughter of the God-King didn’t grab me was cause I hadn’t read the first book.  The summary of book 1 sounds more like a companion novel from the same era of history, but it’s possible there’s backstory I missed that would have made this more enjoyable.

My Rating

Enjoyability (2 out of  5 stars)

Characters (2 out of 5 stars)

Writing (3 out of 5 stars)

Fairly forgettable – I doubt it will cross my mind a year from now.