I had to come to terms with not finishing this book at the 60% mark. The chapters jumped around between characters narrating as well as time (past and present). It seemed like there were a few different story lines happening that didn't feel connected to each other. The plot line felt slow and sometimes boring and the writing didn't feel cohesive. I did want to find out what happened to Bella (and the who behind Richard) but I wasn't invested enough in the book to keep reading to find out.

A confused muddle of a book, with real potential but an apparent identity crisis. Is it a mystery? A missing-persons story? A fast-paced action thriller? A young adult novel?
The story starts at an archaeological site, where ancient ruins are being uncovered. This is a great start, but quickly abandoned as our archaeologists somehow turn out to be a spy and a criminal on the run. There's a murder and a missing teenager, with one of the archaeologists abandoning her life in hiding to find this missing teen because, she keeps insisting, they're basically the same person.
The book is well-written and fast-paced but suffers from an identity crisis, a lack of character depth and a general sense of confusion.

A very well written mystery. I enjoyed h plot, setting and the author’s writing. I highly recommend this book. I received an arc from Netgalley and this is my unbiased review.

Interesting book, i am a fast reader and had to read this slowly, there was a lot in it, at moments it grabbed my attention totally, then it went somewhere else and lost me, good overall with great moments but uneven, like written by two different people or an unclear agenda, but would still recommend and read others by the author.

This book was very mind blowing!! Such a great story! I was just captivated with every word! Wow! This book is a MUST read!

A brilliant book, really enjoyed reading about the characters and the plot, look forward to reading more from this author,

Richard Matthis is a renowned archaelogist and he has discovered Etruscan remains on the island of Crete. Angela Harris is working for him very happy in her job. She is also escaping from her past and feels safe in Crete, thinking that no one would link her to this remote site.

When Bella, Richard's daughter goes missing Matthis drops everything and flies back home to help in the search. Four days later he dies in a strange accident. The relationship between Richard Matthis and his daughter has been tense and Angela over a very short period of time, pretended to be Richard and started a message conversation with Bella, hoping to make the relationship between father and daughter a warmer one.

With Richard's death, Angela has a compulsion to return to the scene of Richard's death and find Bella on her own. She has a feeling Bella needs her, and compromises her own safety because there are people out there who want Angela found.

A rather convoluted tale, including ISIS, a spy network amongst other things it was rather fragmented when all the other stories got in the way. My personal view was that there were too many strands to connect and this led to a lot of confusion. I also felt the cover was awful.

Very entertaining and gripping with three dimensional characters. Strong plot and we'll written. Definitely pick this up if you enjoy well written thrillers. Happy reading!

Amazing read! The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

Sounded good - archaeological thriller. Started well - archaeological thriller. But then went off piste, concentrating, first, upon the relationship between the 'hero' archaeologist, Richard, and his young assistant (yawn, developing romance of a sorts) and then more upon their backgrounds (convoluted). His story of a respected academic with a mentally ill wife and troublesome daughter. The former hates the daughter and eventually commits suicide whilst the daughter, Bella, is essentially brought up by a neighbouring family and then goes missing. The young assistant's story is one of lonely childhood, getting into bad company and reinventing herself several times. After Richard's unexpected death the story really did concentrate upon those backgrounds and how their patterns intertwined. There was strong, and sadly real, comment about people not understanding, leading to fear, leading to persecution with Bella's neighbouring family being Muslims and, coupled with Richard's history of not quite being what it seemed, that was really the main thread to the book.. There were plenty of side threads which I feel added little to the story and the archaeology was mostly irrelevant (although I understand the author's fascination with the Etruscans!). There were bits where I almost gave up but it was a free copy and I felt obliged to complete it. Overall rather too many side threads making an overly complex design and frustrating to read. It's redeeming feature is that there were thought provoking sections and it was well'written in general.
Thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for a free advance copy in return for my honest review.

I tried. I really tried. Unfortunately even though I'm a fan of books that feature archeology- and that's part of this- Archer has too much going on to make this a coherent read. There's mystery, there's secrets and lies, there's some no so subtle political commentary, all of which would be fine except that the basic plot line felt muddled. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I DNF.

Thank you Netgalley fr the free ARC.

This book sounded good based on its insert, but I did not finish it because it really wasn't what Ihad expected. It was more of a bitter romance.

When archaeologist Richard Mathis learns his daughter has disappeared, he leaves his dig in Crete to return home to the U.S. to search for her. Two days later, he’s dead. Now, Richard’s assistant and friend, Angela sets out to find the missing Bella to try to determine what she may have had to do with her father’s death. The search brings Angela uncomfortably close to her own ugly upbringing and leaves her wondering if in finding Bella, she may lose herself