Beautiful Sacrifice by Elizabeth Lowell

Author: Elizabeth Lowell

Publisher: William Morrow

Audiobook: Harper Audio 

Narrator: Richard Ferrone

Date of publication: May 2012

According to Maya legend, December 21, 2012, will mark the end of the world as we know it. Is it myth... or will their prediction become reality?

Archaeologist Lina Taylor has devoted her life to studying ancient Maya artifacts, splitting her time between digs in South America and the classroom teaching college students. But the professor's structured, academic life is about to spin out of control. Some extremely valuable and important Maya artifacts have gone missing. Are the culprits fanatics determined to create chaos and usher in annihilation?

Being a big fan of Elizabeth Lowell's,  I have been eagerly waiting her new book since it was not a continuation of her St. Kilda series. With December 21, 2012 approaching,I was looking forward to seeing Ms. Lowell's take. Sadly, I have to admit, Beautiful Sacrifice was a disappointment to me.  I'm not saying I hated it, I just thought it was an OK read. I was hoping for a real adventure with a romance, but the book fell short of my expectations. I was expecting some exciting time in the jungle with treasure hunting.  In reality, they spent very little time in the jungle and the romance was not very exciting.

I felt like there was way too much information dumping involved.  I often felt like I was listening to an archeology text book about the Mayan culture.  It got kind of boring and I stopped caring about the background information. I was eager for the story to just keep moving.  As to the romance, other than the love scenes, I didn't really feel the connection between Hunter and Lina.  Other than being told over and over that there was an attraction, I never would have seen them together.  I just didn't feel it, which is unusual in her books.  Finally, I'm still trying to figure out how some of the characters fit into the story and why they were included. There as just too much going on and when the reveal came, I was a bit puzzled.  Looking back, I didn't see how any of it pointed to this person.


I will say that I did enjoy the audio part of the book.  Richard Ferrone has an excellent reading voice.  It's probably the thing that kept me from turning this book into a DNF post.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that her next book is better.