⭐️⭐️⭐️
An archaeologist racing to recover the stolen Maya artifact her entire dissertation depends on—with a handsome fellow grad student and a possible antiquities heist involved—sounded extremely promising.
The archaeology was easily the best part. It felt well researched, the academic setting was refreshingly different, and I genuinely learned things without feeling like I had accidentally enrolled in a graduate seminar. Unfortunately, the book could not quite decide whether it wanted to be a romance, a mystery or an adventure, so none of those parts felt fully developed.
The romance was more of a light dusting, the mystery was fairly easy to solve, and the story took a while to reach the part where everyone actually started doing something about the missing artifact. Still, it was smart, different and entertaining enough once it got moving.
Three stars for making academic ruin-hunting sound much more exciting than writing a dissertation has any right to be.