2.5 stars

[ARC provided by the publisher. This doesn’t affect my opinion or the content of my review.]

I Do Not Trust You has a catchy title and an intriguing premise, so I was looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately, it didn’t deliver.

First off, though this isn’t related to the story itself, I think it’s marketed incorrectly. On my copy, it’s categorized as a thriller, and I love a good thriller. But this is more of a contemporary adventure with heavy mythological influences.

I enjoyed the first 100 pages. I thought the story was interesting and fast-paced, but before I got to the 200 page mark, I was losing interest. To be honest, the events of the novel began to feel formulaic, and often the only change seemed to be the location.

I did appreciate the global scavenger hunt aspect of the story; we visit France, Norway, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and possibly more countries that I’m forgetting. I liked the tidbits of culture and mythology woven into the chapters. However, I have seen a few readers question the cultural accuracy. I’m not qualified to discuss that, but I think it’s at least worth mentioning.

While I liked our protagonists, M and Ash, I never connected to them. I read their story without truly caring for them. At times, they felt a bit stereotypical: M was the smarter than usual but just as stubborn girl, while Ash was the aloof boy with a bad past. He’s even British, for crying out loud. I have nothing against M or Ash, but I do feel like I’ve seen them before.

It was never explicitly stated, and there was no kiss as far as I can remember, but it’s fairly obvious that M and Ash are falling in love. In most cases, I’m the hopeless romantic, shipping every ship whether it’s canon or not. But here, I wondered why. I don’t believe the two had any chemistry. It could’ve been a great enemies-to-lovers romance, or focused on the adventure while they became friends. Neither of those ended up happening, and I’m not a fan of what did happen.

One aspect of this novel felt unbelievable to me — how important M and her father were. Basically, there’s a cult that worships the Egyptian god Horus, and another that worships Set. The Set cult wants to gather the pieces of this Set statue that, if put together, can supposedly reincarnate the god and destroy the world. The Horus cult wants to stop that from happening. But in order to find those pieces, the Set cult has M’s dad translating this ancient map, keeping him a prisoner.

What I find unbelievable is that M and her father are the only people in the world with enough knowledge of these lost languages to be able to crack the code. No other archaeologists or linguists or people of any profession could’ve done the same thing. In our modern world, how likely is that? I get that it’s likely that way to increase tension and further the story, but it still bothered me a bit.

Something else that had me raising an eyebrow was how easy certain parts of the hunt were for M and Ash. Don’t get me wrong, there were codes and enemies and natural obstacles. I’m referring to the fact that they were in historical monuments, sacred spaces, sneaking around late at night or in the early morning and going to areas that were likely forbidden. Where were the guards? The alarms? Surely buildings like the Notre Dame have security.

Lastly, I want to talk about the ending. No spoilers, but it felt anticlimactic. The novel — at least, the ARC — has 313 pages, and what I believe to be the climax didn’t occur until nearly 300 pages in. Even with the fight scene and all of those details, I didn’t think it was worth all of the build-up. After the battle, the end felt hastily done, without enough details given to satisfy. This is a stand-alone, but to me, the end almost felt like it was setting up for a sequel. I think another chapter would’ve been beneficial.

Although I wanted to like it, I Do Not Trust You didn’t work for me. I had a lot of minor complaints that kept adding up, and now here we are. I’d recommend this novel to fans of mythology and scavenger hunts, as long as you don’t go in with high expectations. I don’t think I’ll be reading more from either of these authors.