4.75 stars

The audiobook was really good! The voices sounded exactly what I imagined for them to be. I would highly recommend it!

DNF @ 20%

This is a very chonky book! I don't mind this at all, especially when I am interested in continuing with the story. The problem for me with this one was that there was a lot of info dumping and not a lot going on in the beginning of the book. It was also very wordy. I wasn't a fan of the FMC either and thought she didn't suit her age. Although I adore the cover and thought the narrator did a great job I couldn't find myself wanting to continue on.

Perfect for fans of adventurous historical fiction books!
Ellie and Bates have SUCH chemistry and for me, that is the clear star of the book! Don't get me wrong, the story is good but the duo really sell it.
The pacing is really good - there's no wasting time at the start which made it easy to get into. Once hooked, I couldn’t stop! The supporting cast is interesting and pretty well rounded. I appreciate a bad guy who's more than just a mysterious face. I'm really interested to see where the story goes from here! A really great start to the series!

Highly recommend for fans of the Mummy, Jungle Cruise, National Treasure!

Overall I found this to be a really fun listen. The pacing at the start sucks you in and then the end was just had me speeding through it to see what happens next. Unfortunately this did make the middle feel a little slow at times - I was waiting for the action to begin again and when it didn’t right away, I was a bit disappointed. But I still really liked it!

From the start, Ellie is a firecracker and for an FMC, I love that. There were one of two times when I felt like she could’ve toned down the ultra feminist/I must do everything for myself attitude. I do get though that being a woman a hundred plus years ago trying to break what was probably more of a cement ceiling than a glass ceiling could lead to this stubbornness so overall I did really enjoy her as a character!

Bates was a great compliment to her - he is confident and cocky but was able to express his past and problems in a way that felt genuine and mature - not always a given in many MMCs. He gave me major Rick from The Mummy vibes and I am here for it!

The banter back and forth was a definite highlight of the book and the main reason I’ll continue the series. The pair have a great dynamic and I’m keen to see where it goes in the next book!

Thank you NetGalley and Vaughan Woods Publishing for the advanced copy of the audiobook!

This was fun! Swashbuckling at its finest! I'm very excited for the rest of the series! Bates and Ellie are delightful, I loved it all!

Empire of Shadows is a Mummy meets Indiana Jones meets National Treasure historical fantasy delight. This had all of the must have elements for a historical treasure seeking adventure — secrets, maps with perilous routes, hidden traps and pitfalls, a race to the finish, and palpable tension between two great MCs. I adored Ellie’s character and how she wants more from life than to sit by the sidelines as well as not being afraid to go after what she wants. Bates was an absolute cinnamon roll and gave peak Rick O’Connell vibes down to being a *gasp* American. The energy between those two was absolutely perfect, and I found myself rooting for them from the first meeting. I am honestly impressed by how much Benson was able to pack into this story from the waterfall mishaps to the ruins. Benson wrote in such a way that my mind was fully on what was happening in the story and the pacing moved along well. I also appreciate how vivid and descriptive Benson’s world building was. I read this via audiobook and Alex Picard did so well with the narration. I loved the difference in accents when jumping between Ellie and Bates. Not only did it make the POV abundantly clear, but it also kept with the story. I can’t recommend the audiobook for this enough. I can’t wait to read Benson’s next book in the series.

There’s something about an archaeology- or anthropology-based romcom that never fails to make me want to pick it up. Mayan ruins, a lost city and a treasure map?? Give it to me. I enjoyed the story overall, but thought the pacing could use some work. I never really felt “hooked” until the last 10%. That being said, it was interesting enough to bring me back for the second book!

Thanks to NetGalley and Vaughan Woods Publishing for an advanced audiobook copy!

If Indiana Jones, National Treasure, and the Mummy had a baby, but make it feminist!

* scholarly FMC
* American MMC
* Slow Burn romance
* historical fantasy
* dual POV
* no spice - just kisses

This was such a fun story filled with non-stop adventure and a feminist FMC who finds herself in the middle of it all. There is also a great MMC by her side and their banter was so good. Really enjoyed this one!

Rating: 3.5 stars

If you need an adventure with forced proximity and romance and hidden cities, this is the STORY YOU NEED!

Ellie and Adam. Loved every interaction, their banter, it was SOOO GOOD! This romance. swoon.

I love them and can't wait for book 2.

If you love audiobooks- you need this one in your collection. because HOLY COW! Alex out did herself on this story. I will relistening to this book all the time.

This audiobook is epic! Alex nailed every accent, language and emotion in the audiobook version. You don’t want to miss out on her range. You can easily tell who is talking, which POV it is. And you feel like you are living in the book and right in the adventure with Ellie and Adam.

This story is what I wish Indiana Jones had been! Its a hunt for cultural treasure, but with MCs that actually care about the preservation aspect of archaeology.

A plucky Victorian suffragette, Ellie, comes across evidence of a lost South American city, similar to el dorado. A villain tries to take it from her and ends up following her on her journey to discover it. Ellie teams up with the American Adam, who is working as a surveyor mapping out the area, and hijinks ensue.

It's mostly an adventure novel, with a good amount of humor and a dash of romance. It is so well written and engaging, that I had trouble taking breaks! I listened to the audiobook and the narrator did an excellent job as well. She really brought the characters to life! All around this was a truly enjoyable read.

This book is AMAZING. A lot of books claim to be great for fans of The Mummy but this one really does it for me. Ellie is smart, funny, and a delight. Adam is charming, dashing, hot, I can go into heavy detail. The adventure, the romance, the dialogue. Everything about this book is perfection.

I was very excited to listen to this audiobook after hearing about the book and having it compared to The Mummy. While obvious similarities between the two stories are present, it stands on its own and I think this could be a fun adventure series to dive into.

Ellie was very fun to follow along, I could sympathize with her struggle as a female scholar, battle with misogyny, being just ahead of her time with stereotypical gender roles. I loved the sense of adventure and archaeologist discovery. The anti-colonialism commentary and themes made me root for the characters and a happy ending.

I thought the banter between Ellie and Adam was good while they were on the page together, they were very alike in their views on marriage and being underestimated for their knowledge. It was entertaining to read!

While the pacing was on the slower side, I really enjoyed the book and will be looking forward to the next one. Alex Picard did a wonderful job narrating. I really liked how she jumped between the POVs with her accents for Ellie and Adam, as well as the slew of bad guy characters and the like!

3.5⭐️

Thank you Vaughan Woods Publishing for the listening copy to review.

Empire of Shadows follows Ellie as she travels to South America from her home in England to find an ancient city. It's the early 1900s and Ellie has just been fired from her archival job for getting arrested while protesting the lack of women's rights. While waiting in her supervisor's office, Ellie notices some artifacts on his desk that stick out from the usual fare. A medallion and a map that looks like it belongs to possibly a Mayan city intrigue her and she steals them to research them more in private. When Ellie feels guilty about stealing them, she goes to return them and finds her boss and a mysterious man arguing in his office. After hearing her boss get roughed up a bit, Ellie decides it's not a good idea to wait around and leaves. The mysterious man follows her back to her house though and a chase through London ensues until Ellie figures escaping on a boat to South America to find this ancient city by herself is the best course of action. Luckily she stays at a hotel and has a few run ins with a resident there who just happens to be the assistant surveyor to that region and also happens to be incredibly hot. They travel into the bush with Ellie's map and medallion and begin their adventure.

I really liked the narrator of the book, Alex Picard. Some of her accents were a little wonky but there was a big range of them in this book! The only bad thing about the audiobook was that I couldn't skim sentences when some of the characters made me roll my eyes. Ellie and Adam were both smart on paper, they even had their moments of intelligence, which made the moments when they made outlandish assumptions or particularly stupid decisions more annoying. Adam's super obsessed with his machete and Ellie is always amazed that people loot ruins for treasures. The bad guys had the craziest assumption of historical artifacts that didn't seem to have any reasoning or evidence to prove that remotely correct, which really blew my mind! The prologue was the best part, I thought. I wish the book had been more about the legend surrounding the ancient city!

I'd listen to an audiobook from Picard again but I wouldn't read another book from Benson. It had it's interesting moments but I can't overlook the amount of times the book frustrated me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Vaughan Woods Publishing for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I loved this book. Empire of Shadows is a feminist, anticolonialism adventure featuring Ellie Mallory as a 24 year old working at the Public Records Office as an archivist. That's unusual because it's 1898 in London, and women did not traditionally work. Ellie is peaceably demonstrating for women's suffrage when a riot breaks out and Ellie is arrested. The next day, Ellie is summoned to her bosses office and she knows she is going to be sacked because proper young ladies are not arrested. His desk and shelves are a mess so she is organizing things when she finds a book that is hollowed out and has a map to lost city where X literally marks the spot. She hears her boss coming so she tucks the book into her pocket and he comes into the office and fires her. Ellie heads to her desk to clean out her stuff and when she is ready to leave she realizes she still has the book so she heads to her bosses office to give it back when she hears men yelling at her boss. She knows what they are looking for and that they won't find it in his office because it is still in her pocket. Then she hears her boss give up her name as being alone in the office so Ellie takes off. First she heads home, when one of the bad guys shows up at her house she packs a bag and catches a train for the coast so she can catch a boat to find this lost city. How she was going to find anything was beyond me, but I was willing to go on a little faith because I really liked Ellie. Once the boat docks Ellie meets Adam - Adam is the romantic subplot and the banter is great. The bad guys show up as well and there is more excitement and danger as they both seek the lost city and it's treasure. This was a fun read and I loved the ARC of the audio book as well. It is a bit chunky clocking in at 450 pages. I give this 4.5 stars. Thank you to Net Galley #netgalley and Vaughan Woods Publishing for my advance copy.

Genre: historical adventure romance
British Honduras (Belize),1898

When Ellie Mallory, scholar, suffragette, and strong-willed personality, loses her job, she decides to grab ahold of life and take an adventure. With a treasure map in hand and years of scholastic knowledge of the Mayans in her head, Ellie hops on board a steamer to British Honduras in Central America. There, she meets Adam Bates, an American who is doing everything he can to avoid returning home to the family business and tying himself down to anything. He makes his living as a mapmaker in the wilds. He’s the sort of handsome man who infuriates Ellie, and she’d just as soon stay far away from him. Except he’s the only person who can help her trace the keys to her map, and what she hopes is the dream find of a scholar’s lifetime.

On the one hand, I enjoyed this book. It’s plot-forward, adventurous, and a lot of fun to read. Ellie and Adam are always running into more trouble, bringing them closer together on their perilous adventure. On the other hand, it was too long. Maybe by 100 pages? At 478 pages or 16h48m on audiobook, I kept wondering when the book would end. The artifact plot - the underlying plot behind the adventure in the book - feels a little too broad in scope. While you can feel Benson setting us up for a large series, as the hours pass while reading it feels its own weight. Ellie comes across as a Mary Sue, which annoyed me a bit, and it irked me more when Adam called her “Princess” as if she was spoiled. Look Adam, no Victorian lady is going to have experience trouncing around the jungle…

The romance was a lot of fun, if not particularly deep. But if I were a single Victorian lady who spent weeks in the jungle with a handsome, often shirtless, rugged man who could speak multiple languages and bushwack his way through the trees, I’d probably fall too. Their banter is easy, and the biggest roadblocks to their relationship are that 1) she’s opposed to marriage and 2) he’s her older brother’s best friend. But their banter on page is easy to read and enjoy and root for.

The narration by Alex Picard was the highlight of this reading experience. She brings a lot of exuberance and emotion to the book, and I’m glad this is one I listened to.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5

Empire of Shadows is a witty, fun historical fantasy with adventure and romance perfect for Jungle Cruise, National Treasure, and What the River Knows fans.

I had so much fun with this one! The characters were captivating and funny. I loved the chemistry between Ellie and Adam. The incorporation of romance, history, and fantasy elements was great. With fast pacing, mystery, danger, and puzzles, this book reads like an adventure movie. I love treasure hunts and cannot wait to read more of the series!

Alex Picard narrated this book beautifully. The accents fit the characters, and her voice is lovely and soothing. Her narration made the story even more immersive and fun. I highly recommend listening to this one on audio!

Thank you to the publisher for the free ALC!

The feminine rage is strong in this one. Ellie, the female main character finds herself rowing hard upstream against a highly patriarchal and misogynistic society and I adore it. Her desire to be a respected scholar and archaeologist sets off a heart racing and often times laughter inducing chain of events. One can’t help but swoon over the American cowboy finds herself partnered with on this crazily epic adventure. I love the attention to detail the author has in this world building the cross between true historical accounts and mythology and the level of scholarly research perfection. This is one of those series that could lead on so many fun and exciting future endeavors and I would love to tag along with Ellie and Adam while it does.

Highlights:
✨Feminist Scholar FMC
✨American Cowboy MMC
✨Slow-Burn
✨Historical Fantasy
✨Archaeology

Favorite Quote: “Books were like breathing for her - an extension of her being”

“The gesture still made Ellie think of stories of knights errant rescuing maidens. Slaying dragons, she thought distantly. She wondered what sort of dragons a man like Adam Bates might be called to slay.”

Thank you to NetGalley and author for the review copy of this audiobook. My opinions are my own.

I enjoyed this book!

The narrator did a wonderful job. I especially enjoyed how she changed accents. The pacing was perfect in the audio book, as well as the nuances in her reading.

I would recommend this audiobook to anyone who enjoyed historical fantasy, witty banter and I agree that it has a lot of the mummy vibes.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the audio Arc. All opinions are my own and I am posting them voluntarily.

The Narrator is brilliant. Alex did such a good job with all the characters that I was fully immersed into the story.

Ellie and Adam are adorable and absolutely great together, I loved their banter throughout the whole book. I really liked we got to read from both of their point of views and they were both as ignorant as each other when it came to their feelings at the start. They are just great together!

This is definitely perfect for fans of The Mummy. The American who can help her fight off assailants and hike through the wilderness, while remaining both charming and infuriating at the same time. The English woman who is very opinionated and strong willed, determined to find her ruins, while remaining wild and endearing.

The historical aspects of the book were written really well from the word choices to the women's movement, it was done really well and I was fully immersed throughout. The story and history of the ruins was intriguing, I can't wait to read book two and go on another adventure with Ellie and Adam.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for this Audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of the audiobook.
I devoured this book and I cannot wait for the next one. The narrator did a wonderful job switching between a wide range of accents in this book. There was not a dull second of this listening experience.