Romance

Overview with Spoilers for The Stolen Queen

January 7, 2025

My Overview with Spoilers for The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis discusses the truth that I don’t often assessment historic fiction. However since a lot of The Stolen Queen is ready in Nineteen Seventies New York Metropolis AND there’s a theft of the Metropolitan Museum that must be solved, I made a decision I used to be in! Let’s focus on.

Reader's Guide for The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis. The book's cover on a dark green background. The cover shows the Metropolitan Museum at night with a line drawing of an Egyptian queen in the sky

Jen’s Fast Take: The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis

General I discovered this a very enjoyable and entertaining story. Should you fear about dry, boring historic fiction, this e-book shouldn’t be!
The Stolen Queen is a twin timeline, twin narrative historic fiction e-book with a touch of thriller
The story alternates between New York within the late Nineteen Seventies and Egypt within the Thirties
Davis does an incredible job of choosing fascinating historic moments to attach: the last decade after the invention of King Tut’s Tomb in 1922, and the opening of The Temple of Dendur on the Met in 1978 and the King Tut artifacts museum tour in 1979
My different favourite component was the incorporation of an actual life individual and occasion: Diana Vreeland, former Vogue editor and particular guide to the Met’s Costume Institute from 1972-1989. The Stolen Queen consists of Met Gala 1978, which honored Sergei Diaghilev and his costumes for The Ballets Russes.
There have been a number of minor mysteries within the story: the theft of the “Cerulean Queen,” the reappearance of a priceless Egyptian necklace, and a lacking individuals case.
To be printed on January 7, 2025 by Dutton Books. 352 pages. Due to the writer for offering an advance copy for assessment.

Overview with Spoilers for the Stolen Queen

My “fast take” was not that fast so I received’t have many extra factors to make!

And in case you are studying this for e-book membership, you possibly can seize my Stolen Queen E-book Membership Information right here:

I don’t learn a variety of historic fiction however I like tales set in New York Metropolis, love the Metropolitan Museum (I went there a couple of days in the past to get some behind the scenes pictures for the information above!) and have an curiosity in Egyptian tradition.

I used to be a little bit apprehensive moving into, however Fiona Davis has made the story very readable with a number of sturdy feminine characters: Charlotte, a curator on the Met; Annie, a younger girl who’s considering Egyptian tradition and vogue; Diana Vreeland; and Hathorkare, a feminine pharaoh who was wronged by historical past!

The e-book additionally incorporates the real-life challenge of artwork repatriation, explaining how and why priceless cultural artifacts ended up taken by Western archeologists and museums, and makes an attempt to get them returned.

Davis clearly did an enormous quantity of analysis. Incorporating ALL these components required a good quantity of info-dumping. Davis did this as artfully as attainable, and it was mandatory for readers not aware of artwork repatriation, historic Egypt, or archeology.

General, the mix of Thirties journey/Nineteen Seventies tradition was reader catnip for me!

Let’s delve into the mysteries of The Stolen Queen!

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The Stolen Queen Ending Defined

The Stolen Queen had three predominant mysteries:

Who stole the Cerulean Queen from the Met Gala?
What occurred to Charlotte’s husband Henry and child Layla again in 1936?
How did the broad collar necklace get from Henry’s suitcase to the Metropolitan museum?

Who stole the Cerulean Queen from the Metropolitan Museum?

Ma’at, the fictional Egyptian group devoted to reclaiming stolen artifacts. The co-conspirators embrace the mysterious ankh-wearing man who stole the statue; Mona, a docent on the Met, and her husband Karim; Heba, the proprietor of the Farid Gallery; and Leon, one of many British doctoral candidates on the 1936 dig.

As Annie and Charlotte attempt to rescue the Cerulean Queen, they’re aided by Jabari, the grandson of the person Charlotte saved from the cobra chew.

What Occurred to Henry and Layla in The Stolen Queen?

Poor Charlotte. If this e-book had been written within the 2020s it may appear unbelievable that Charlotte didn’t attempt to monitor her lacking household down, however the Nineteen Seventies setting made it plausible.

Did anybody else suppose that Annie is perhaps Charlotte’s granddaughter? I did. If Charlotte’s daughter was born in 1937, she may have had a child in 1959 who could be 19 in 1978, like Annie.

Henry is alive and so is Layla? The place are they? Let’s reply the opposite questions first:

How did the Broad Collar get from Henry’s suitcase to the Met?

It was owned by Mona’s dad and mom, Darius and Heba Farid.

Darius Farid is Henry’s new id. Charlotte thinks Mona is her daughter, however she shouldn’t be.

Darius and Heba’s daughter Mona organized for the mortgage to the Met as a approach to get into the docent coaching course so she may steal the Cerulean Queen.

What Occurred to Henry after the shipwreck?

Henry searched all of the hospitals for Charlotte and Layla. He wrote to Charlotte’s dad and mom, who didn’t inform him she was alive. Then he began a gallery in Geneva, the place he met and married Heba.

The place is Layla?

Layla is Fatima, the clerk from the Winter Palace Lodge in Luxor. Her dad and mom instructed her that she had been rescued from a shipwreck and was an orphan. However Layla discovered that Henry and Charlotte had been her organic dad and mom. However she didn’t wish to search for them as a result of it will harm her adoptive dad and mom.

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