Nefertiti: A Novel (Egyptian Royals Collection)

I am annoyed at having wasted a credit on this. This story is so meandering and unnecessarily long. There was SO MUCH that could have been fully taken out of this novel and absolutely nothing of value to the plot or characters or theming would be lost. The main character, Mutnodjmet, is a deeply unlikable I'm-not-like-the-other-girls Mary Sue who cannot get over herself for a gosh darn second. You barely see Nefertiti or anything about the Amarna period, which you are actually here for, because Mutnodjmet hates her sister, but is also one of those self-sacrificing whiners who absolutely has to martyr themselves at every opportunity because they are just so much better than you. Mutnodjmet is a brilliantly uncomplicated angel who is a plant genius and basically a doctor and everybody loves her and thinks she is way better than her horrible sister, Nefertiti, who is always so MEAN to Mutnodjmet which is very unfair because Mutnodjmet basically lets Nefertiti walk all over her because she's just ~that good and pure~. Mutnodjmet doesn't *care* about looking pretty, you guys, she doesn't need all this makeup, fancy clothing and stuff! She's so unique! She's so *special*. A distressing amount of this book is spent focusing on just the petty, boring concerns of its narrator, a person about whom almost nothing is known, and who is characterized as having a deep loathing of politics and palace life. You know, the stuff you're actually reading this book for. We spend chapter upon chapter agonizing over whether Mutnodjmet, a person so barely attested in the historical record that that's very probably NOT EVEN HER NAME, MICHELLE MORAN, is going to overcome her made up fertility issues and have a baby with her perfect uncomplicated husband who is extremely woke and kind and lovely and the most handsomest man in all of Egypt and he just loves her so much, you guys, their love is truly one for the ages. You can tell because they barely know one another and basically just awkwardly flirt a few times. Who cares? Nobody cares. There's nothing of historical value here because so little is known about this period and, as noted above that Mutnodjmet's name is more likely to have been Mutbenret, there wasn't a ton of effort put into actually being right. Also, I need to talk about this somewhere: it's gross to introduce a relationship (one which I must emphasize the author created herself because, as I pointed out, very little is known about Mutnodjmet) in which one party begins the relationship at 13, while the other partner is 21. It doesn't matter if it is set in a ~different time~. She invented this relationship *in this time*. This time right now. She thought "yeah I'm really feeling hooking up a teenager with a grown man" in this very day and age. A 15-year-old getting with a 23-year-old is goals, apparently. So gross.