A.W. Exley

Nefertiti's Heart

Colleen

2 Stars
 
*A disjointed combo of romance, supernatural mystery, & steampunk*
**This review contains minor, unhidden spoilers that do not relate to the plot**


Steampunk is a genre that gets a bad rap sometimes. Admittedly, I don’t read a ton of it, but sometimes I’m in the mood for. Unfortunately, Nefertiti’s Heart did not end up being the best choice. It’s probably a prime example of why Steampunk gets labeled as corny.

Nefertiti’s Heart is about a young woman who returns to the home she was exiled from to deal with her late father’s estate. But she finds herself caught up in a mystery involving an Egyptian artifact with potential supernatural aspects. And she ends up tangled with a Nathanial Trent, the “villainous viscount” who has one foot in the aristocracy and the other in his criminal underworld.

I was optimistic at first. The story opened with the main character kicking the butts of two henchmen breaking into her home. Femme Fatales are always fun to read. But my enthusiasm didn’t last long, because despite being supposedly a lethally trained fighter full of street smarts, Cara needed to be rescued an awful lot.

There were some major issues with the way trauma was handled. Cara had suffered through some truly horrific things at a young age. Apparently, the cure for trauma is a controlling, toxic romance (she said with utter sarcasm).


  “‘If you think I’m going to fall into bed with you, you’re mistaken.’…
‘Today? No. Tomorrow? No. But I’m a patient man and I always get what I want, in the end.’”

And that really sums up Nathaniel’s entire attitude towards their “relationship.” He relentlessly pursues her while whittling away her options of anywhere else to turn. Yet he’s portrayed as a hero? He may have had seemingly tender moments, but I could never overlook that they were all the result of his dogged pursuit of Cara. And somehow Cara goes from having panic attacks whenever someone touches her (no matter how innocuous) to a truly ridiculous sex scene: in a flipping tree where Nathanial cuts her underwear off with a knife. And the readers are seriously expected to believe that someone who was brutally tortured and raped at a young age will not only suddenly and miraculously get over fear of being touched, but that she’d also be ok with a guy sticking a knife up her skirts?? Hell no. Just no.

But I will say that led to a scene that was entirely unintentionally hilarious. You see, the world of Nefertiti’s Heart was mostly realistic to London 1861 with a few steampunk elements half-heartedly thrown in. Having read this, I’d barely even call this Steampunk. Other than some random mentions of mechanical horses pulling carriages and things like that, there was almost nothing Steampunk about this story. You could easily take out those mentions without affecting the overall plot at all. You’d just be left with a historical romance with several anachronisms. Anyway, back to the funny part. The characters’ wardrobes are mostly described to the time period. One exception is Cara wearing her corsets on top of her shirts as a fashion statement. The other is that the author seems to have made the character wear modern underwear. But I kept picturing the undergarments of the time period – which were obvious larger than modern women’s underwear. So after Nathanial cuts off Cara’s underwear during the aforementioned terrible sex scene, he starts carrying them in his pocket and pulling them out to sniff them in public. Yes, really. I couldn’t make this shit up. So when the author described Sir Pantysniffer pulling out Cara’s underwear, I automatically pictured him pulling out a massive pair of bloomers and trying to casually use them like a hankie – which sent me into a fit of giggles. So maybe all the terrible parts were worth reading just for the unintentional humor of that moment. Or maybe not.

I’ll wrap things up by saying that the mystery subplot didn’t seem fully integrated into the romance part of the story. It just randomly popped up throughout the story. Basically, this is yet another toxic romance trying to hide behind other elements. I definitely won’t continue with the series.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 3 Stars
Writing Style: 2 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 2 Stars
Level of Captivation: 3 Stars
Originality: 2 Stars

Sarah Escorsa

Don’t be fooled by the description for this book. It has little to do with steampunk or mystery and everything to do with romance. I don’t like romance so it was a big turn off for me. I was expecting a fun steampunk adventure with a strong female character but what I got was LOTS of romance. Talk about being misled! 

The sexual content of the book should definitely be mentioned in the description and I really think no book depicting the repeated rape and beating of an underage child should come without a warning. I am not easily shocked so it didn’t bother me but it wasn’t what I expected from this book. 

I did enjoy the premise of Nefertiti’s Heart and found it intriguing. I was anxious to find out what had happened to 14-year-old Cara and liked that the details were divulged as the story progressed. Still, as engaging as the first chapters were, the book went downhill faster than the speed of light. My potential rating went from a 3 to a 2 before I settled for a 1. Terrible I know but this romance with a hint of steampunk and mystery thrown in really put me off. 

What’s more, characterization is poorly done. Neither Cara nor Nate make sense as characters. Take Cara for example. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why she would confide in Nate and tell him all about the abuse she suffered as a child after knowing him for about 5 minutes. And for someone who cannot stand being touched, there sure is a lot of touching going on between her and Nate! Cara gets extremely annoying with her “I want you to touch me so bad but my inner monster won’t let me” thing. She keeps taking one step forward then three steps back… This keeps going on an on until finally she gives in… up on a tree? Seriously? Oh sorry, that’s only because she feels much safer up there… Anyway, Cara & Nate are up in their tree doing their thing and the author will have us believe that Cara, who was repeatedly raped and beaten to a pulp at the age of 14, Cara who has an “inner monster” that makes it unbearable for her to be touched by others, this same Cara doesn’t flinch when Nate pulls out a knife to “slice her silk knickers”? She sure has come a long way really fast! A few chapters before the tree episode she was freaking out whenever Nate touched her but now she has no problem whatsoever when he puts a knife near her knickers… That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but hey, this book has a 4.01 average rating and most reviewers seem to love it, so I must be the one reader who just didn’t get it. 

Nate’s behavior is a bit difficult to understand but his character makes more sense once it is revealed that he has been lusting after Cara since he was about 17 years old. The problem is, I hate the whole instalove thing, especially when authors justify it by explaining the characters met for about 5 minutes when they were younger. 

More about Nate: the author tries to make him come across as dark and handsome and dangerous and sexy and “oh I’m so good at hiding my emotions” but he just feels fake. Oh, and if you want your main character to come across as a bad boy, please don’t make him run off with the girl's knickers peering from his pocket. It doesn’t make him hot and sexy and dangerous, it just makes him look silly. 

Overall, I found this book to be quite ridiculous but I guess that it’s just because of the steamy romance factor. If you like romance you will probably enjoy Nefertiti’s Heart.

Nefertiti's Heart

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