Reawakened

First of all, I would like to say that I don't think ANY middle grade books EVER manifest the sort of love/hate relationships with readers that Young Adult books do. Check out some of the reviews for this book on Goodreads and be amused. Readers seem to either adore this and squee when a new one is released, or they abhor them and want the author to rot in the Underworld.

I was just kind of baffled by the entire book.


Houck, Colleen. Reawakened.
August 25th 2015 by Delacorte Press
E ARC from Netgalley.com

High school senior Lilliana is good at doing what her high powered New York City parents want her to do, so she's given free rein and plenty of spending money. She also knows the guard at the museum, so when she needs some quiet space, she is allowed to go to a closed Egyptian exhibit to work. When she's there, though, she meets Amon, a bald but very hot guy who seems... disturbed. After lunch with her friends from school, she sees Amon get injured in traffic and rushes to his aid. She gets him some food, determines that he is nuts but harmless, and ends up taking him to her apartment to get him some clothes. She finally realizes that yes, he is a reanimated mummy, and he needs her life force to find his canopic jars as well as his two brothers, who are also mummies. Every thousand years, they have to get together to fend off the advances of the dark god Seth, to whom their fathers sacrificed them many years ago. Since he is kind of cute, Lily willingly follows him to Egypt (he hypnotizes everyone they see into letting them travel without tickets or passports), where they find an Egyptologist and some shabtis to help out, and get to travel into several archaeological sites in order to find Amon's brothers and conduct their ceremony before it's too late. For Lily, however, the palpable heat of Amon's reanimated self is overwhelming, and in between various injuries, she falls in love with him.
Strengths: The cover is very attractive. Egyptian mythology background, and lots of details about mummies and other Egyptian tombs, gods, and beliefs. I always keep in mind that even the ancient cultures had a lot of different versions of their own myths, so I won't complain about not being able to pin down a particular story from the past for the basis of this. A fair amount of action, and a LOT of romance.
Weaknesses: Well, I can see this being very popular with high school girls who like romance books. It's sort of an Egyptian bodice ripper/Harlequin romance. Lots of descriptions of Amon's chest, lots of fainting and being rescued, fantasizing about kissing, and even Amon's hot reanimated brothers hit on Lilliana, who is a wealthy, well-dressed American and rather clueless.
What I really think: Um. Um. "Palpable heat" was actually a quote from the E ARC. I think I am just not the demographic for this, although when I outlined the beginning of the book for my daughter and asked if it would take her THAT many pages to realize that Amon was, in fact, a reanimated mummy, we both agreed that if we met hot, shirtless guy who seemed weird in a closed Egyptian exhibit, we would immediately assume he WAS a reanimated mummy and go with it.