I generally enjoy fiction about Egypt such as Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody mystery series, which I liked so much I read the entire series. Compared to that inimitable series, Reflections in the Nile falls flat. It is a retelling of the Biblical plagues of Egypt with a time-traveling heroine (Chloe) who trades places with an ancient priestess and moves from the 1990s back to ancient Egypt in the time of the female pharoah, Hapshepsut. As the plagues mount, Chloe is so clueless she doesn’t realize she’s living through these monumental events.

A couple of things really tested my ability to suspend disbelief. (1) When Chloe trades places with the priestess, RaEmhetepet, the fetus the priestess is carrying is transferred to Chloe but not the priestess’s eye coloring or body build. Chloe miscarries this fetus at sixteen weeks gestation. Despite this, when Chloe meets the court physician, Cheftu, falls in love with him. and has intercourse, she is (of course) a virgin. (2) For some reason, after millennia have passed, God has been chosen Chloe to correct history and reveal that Hatshepsut, not Rameses, was pharaoh during the plagues once Chloe returns to the modern world.

Overall, the book takes too long to get started and introduces a male character that one would assume would eventually be the male love interest, but no, he fades out of existence early on. There’s a lot going on in this novel, but at 548 pages, it seemed endless. The story frequently drags especially through the middle. It is often over- or under-written with areas having either too much detail or too little detail to convey the story. The sexual encounters devolve into purple prose. The characters are for the most part one-dimensional. That said, the descriptions of ancient Egyptian life seem accurate and were interesting to read.

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Reflections in the Nile (Grand Central Publishing, September 24, 2024) is available through:

Your local independent bookseller      |     Amazon     |     Barnes & Noble

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You can read my review of the Amelia Peabody series here.

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