The Stolen Queen
Ratings9
Average rating4.1
From New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis, an utterly addictive new novel that will transport you from New York City’s most glamorous party to the labyrinth streets of Cairo and back.
Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. That is until an unbearable tragedy strikes.
New York City, 1978: Nineteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.”
Meanwhile, Charlotte is now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art. She’s consumed by her research on Hathorkare—a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant.
The night of the gala: One of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing, and there are signs Hathorkare’s legendary curse might be reawakening. Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, and a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she’d never return: Egypt. But if they have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past—which may mean leading them both directly into danger.
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Our primary character is Charlotte, who we meet while she is on an archaeological dig in Egypt in the 1930s. During Charlotte’s time in Egypt she faces a lot of the typical misogynistic obstacles one would expect of a young woman trying to find success in a man’s world. It’s during this time she meets Henry, a dashing young man with whom she ends up falling in love. During their affair, Charlotte becomes pregnant and they decide to marry, but with the approach of WWII they find themselves at the mercy of circumstance and the dig site is shut down.
On the night they leave Egypt, a tragedy occurs and Henry, their daughter, and a stolen artifact are lost in the sinking of the ship meant to take them home. As we follow her, we jump forward to 1970s New York where she is now a curator for the Egyptian exhibits at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are currently amping up for the Met Gala, which is being organized by the legendary Diana (Dee-on-uh) Vreeland, who was “FUN FACT” at one time the editor of Vogue Magazine and tied to the Met Gala from 1972 to 1989.
Enter our additional POV, Annie, a young woman growing up in New York who is just trying to survive while taking care of her mother. As a favor for her landlady, Annie takes a delivery to the Met for Diana and stumbles into the opportunity of a lifetime, when she is hired to be Diana’s personal assistant.
What follows in The Stolen Queen is an impeccable blend of fiction and fact, where the stolen artifact from 1936 is now on loan to The Met, raising all kinds of questions for Charlotte. Annie begins to glow in her new role, but sabotage becomes the name of the game, and she must prove her innocence. Missing persons, stolen antiquities, and international art repatriation organizations abound in this story. It is complex and interesting, and can be overwhelming in its expansiveness, but has an exceptional core story of never giving up. If you love a good mystery with a heroine, in this case two of them, whose perseverance leads to adventure and answers then this is a book I would recommend.
Originally posted at youtu.be.
This was a fun read but does take a little bit to get going. Once the story gets going, the pace gets better but a good chunk of the first half is backstory. Completely necessary backstory, though!
An adventurous exploration of the resilience of a female archeologist who's faced a severe tragedy and is in the process of piecing her life together until her past comes back to haunt her leaving her no choice but to confront her fears and set things right.
