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Moon Knight’s Ancient Egyptian imagery explained, including the Weighing of the Heart, Ammit, and Anubis

Marvel’s new Disney+ TV series goes further back than most superhero tales for its source material – to the gods of Ancient Egypt. But who is Ammit? And what’s that tattoo on Ethan Hawke’s arm?

In the show Oscar Isaac plays mild-mannered British Museum shop assistant Steven Grant – although as we soon learn there is at least one other identity vying for control of his mind and body.

We don’t quite get there in the first episode, but in the comics Grant is one of the personas of American mercenary Marc Spector, aka the superhero Moon Knight, who was brought back to life by the Egyptian moon god Khonshu in order to fight crime and protect the innocent.

Oscar Isaac in Moon Knight

In Ancient Egyptian mythology, the name Khonshu, or Khons, means traveller – a reference to the moon’s journey across the night sky. The lunar deity had powers of fertility and healing – which fits with his reviving of Spector in the comics.

We don’t see any of this in the first episode of the TV show, but we do get a bit more detail about the links to Ancient Egypt of Moon Knight’s enemy, Arthur Harrow, played by Ethan Hawke.

Harrow is a cult leader who seems to channel or worship Ammit, or the Devourer, a frightening creature who has the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion, and the back legs of a hippopotamus and plays a key role in the Ancient Egyptian ceremony for the dead known as ‘the weighing of the heart’.

The ceremony – which has some similarities to the Christian idea of St Peter judging the worthiness of a dead person’s life at the gates of Heaven – sees Anubis, the god of embalming, operate a set of weighing scales, with the heart of the dead person on one side and a feather on the other.

If the heart is in balance with the feather, you go to the afterlife, which the Egyptians called the Field of Reeds. But if your heart is heavier than the feather, you get eaten by Ammit – although it is the jackal-headed Anubis that seems the most aggressive and terrifying monster in the show, attacking Isaac’s character by night in the museum.

You can see these weighing scales tattooed on the arms of Harrow and some of his followers in Moon Knight, and an early scene shows Harrow weighing up the life of one of his disciples, the tattoo of the scales wriggling and swaying creepily on his wrist.  

The Weighing of the Heart tattoo in Moon Knight

Another key element of the first episode is a stolen scarab that Harrow says belongs to Ammit. This may be a reference to a heart scarab, which also plays an important role in the weighing of the heart (and in my novel of the same name).

The heart was weighed because the Ancient Egyptians believed that it was this organ – rather than the brain – that was home to a person’s mind, conscience and memory. But your heart could ‘speak against you’ during the ceremony, revealing your sins to Anubis. One way to prevent this was to keep hold of a ‘heart scarab’ that would protect you from this kind of betrayal from your own heart.

With the theme of multiple personalities in Moon Knight, that’s an idea that could fit quite neatly into the TV show as it continues.

• Paul Tudor Owen’s novel The Weighing of the Heart is published by Obliterati Press and won the People’s Book Prize 2020

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The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen - Gatsby and me

Much of it is not even set in the city itself, but without The Great Gatsby I would never have got hooked on New York – a fascination that shaped my life.

Gatsby’s final paragraphs are rightly hailed as the ultimate literary encapsulation of the American Dream, as F Scott Fitzgerald conjures up the “Dutch sailors” arriving in the new world, “[man] face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder”. But to me another section was key when I first read the book as a teenager: the moment when Nick and Gatsby travel over the Queensboro Bridge and into Manhattan.

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time,” Nick recounts, “in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world … Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge.”

There was more to Gatsby than the magnetism of its setting, of course. I loved Fitzgerald’s vivid and original imagery – the station wagon scampering to and from the train station “like a bright yellow bug”, the eyes of Dr TJ Eckleburg – as well as his inimitable and moving turns of phrase - “young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life”. The book’s theme of doomed love was catnip to a teenager.

But it was his depiction of New York as a city of infinite possibility that really stuck with me. I had caught the bug, and my yearning for the city led me quickly on to The Catcher in the Rye, with its irresistible hard-boiled teenage slang; to James Baldwin’s Another Country, set in a Manhattan full to the brim with artists and writers and musicians; the grimy, crime-plagued grid of traffic in Taxi Driver and Mean Streets; and the "music on Clinton Street all through the evening" in Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat.  

It wasn’t a real city to me – from 3,000 miles away in Manchester, New York was as remote and out of reach as the moon. I viewed it as a fictional place – a set for some of the greatest works of literature, music and film of the 20th Century – rather than as somewhere with bricks-and-mortar buildings and flesh-and-blood inhabitants.

This feeling remained even during my first visit; I was studying in Pittsburgh, and my friends and I boarded the Greyhound at the bus station there just as Paul Simon's characters do at the start of America. One of them tapped me on the shoulder to wake me the next morning as the coach thundered along the overpass somewhere near Newark and the skyline of Manhattan came into view. I remember the Twin Towers, and the crush of buildings below, beside and around them compressed between the rivers. It seemed simultaneously instantly familiar and strangely unreal. I wanted to be part of it.

It was over a decade later before I managed to get a job there, by which time I had nearly finished the final draft of my novel The Weighing of the Heart, my attempt to set down some of what I felt about New York in writing as I told the story of Nick, a young artist who steals a priceless painting from the wall of his landlords' home on the Upper East Side. Nick is a Brit like me, and how he feels about the city is how I imagined I would feel if I ever managed to live there.

But I also wanted this book to connect back to the roots of my interest in New York – The Great Gatsby. As in Fitzgerald’s book, I wanted my narrator – who I named after Gatsby’s – to view the city through outsider’s eyes. Partly because of its immigrant roots, it’s arguable that some of the best writing, art and music about New York comes from those looking at the place from without, whether that’s Paul Auster, who was born across the Hudson in Newark, PJ Harvey on her album Stories from City, Stories from the Sea, or Fitzgerald himself, who is from the Midwest. His Nick takes points out that all of The Great Gatsby’s key characters, “Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.”

At times my book tries to mirror the elegiac tone of Gatsby, so to acknowledge this debt I had my Nick echo Gatsby’s Dutch sailors, describing how “out past the flat roof almost all the skyscrapers had disappeared into mist, just the odd coloured light blinking groggily here and there, and I suddenly felt exultantly what the New Yorkers of a hundred years ago must have felt, two hundred, three hundred, that this island and this city was theirs to create from scratch”.

Looking now at my copy of Gatsby – an Abacus book given away with the Guardian in 1992 – I can see that it wasn’t just the text itself that had a big impact on me – this particular edition had, too. Its introduction by Matthew J Bruccoli of the University of South Carolina recounts the problems Fitzgerald initially had with the book’s structure and explains how he eventually managed to reorganise its chapters with the help of his editor, Maxwell Perkins. A diagram showed how he moved key sections around in the manuscript.

I’m sure that being able to look under the bonnet of a masterpiece like this – “I’ve fixed up the two weak chapters (VI and VII) … I’ve improved his first party,” Fitzgerald wrote to Perkins – must have helped me see writing as a process that was carefully worked at, even for a luminary like Fitzgerald, as opposed to a mysterious matter of waiting and hoping for inspiration to strike.

I think I got to know something of the real New York as well as the fictional one when I lived there – its vast inequalities as well as its opportunities. It’s clear when Nick and Gatsby cross the Queensboro Bridge that the city’s “wild promise” is not necessarily open to all. The example of New York’s astonishing nature that prompts Nick to say that “anything could happen” is a car full of black people overtaking them, rolling their eyes haughtily, their driver a white chauffeur. But perhaps it’s only fitting that this most celebrated novel of the American Dream is not immune to the racism that has always been inextricably linked to that dream.

Now I’m back in London and, like everyone, in the middle of the Covid-19 lockdown. New York has gone back to being as inaccessible as it was in my teenage years. The closest I can get is in the pages of books like Gatsby.

You can buy The Weighing of the Heart – which won the People’s Book Prize for fiction 2020 – for 99p / 99c here.

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Paul Tudor Owen's The Weighing of the Heart - Goodreads annotations

I've been meaning to do these Goodreads annotations of my novel The Weighing of the Heart for a while. Here I talk about failing to become a New Yorker, trying to imitate The Great Gatsby and The Remains of the Day, and a lost scarab in the British Museum.

You can buy The Weighing of the Heart – which won the People’s Book Prize for fiction 2020 – for 99p / 99c here.

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The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen: interview

I talked to Whispering Stories about my novel The Weighing of the Heart, writing in various different WeWorks around New York City, why I changed the title of my book, who I would play in the movie version, and what a baseball-cap-wearing talking duck would say to me if he walked in right now. 

You can buy The Weighing of the Heart – which won the People’s Book Prize for fiction 2020 – for 99p / 99c here. 

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The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen review: ‘make your own decisions about Nick’s actions’

A fantastic review of my novel The Weighing of the Heart by author and book reviewer E.S. Barrison:

Book Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 / 5 stars)

Nick Braeburn is trying to step into a new life after his break-up with long-term girlfriend, Hannah, in New York. As an Englishman in New York City, he has melded into a proper American, feeling out of place with his English family. After the wealthy Peacock sisters take him up as a tenant, he is drawn to their priceless piece of Egyptian art in their study, as well as their neighbor Lydia. But when both Nick and Lydia come together under the influence of a crime, all their secrets begin to unravel.

In a piece that, like many thrillers, places us in the mind of the perpetrator, we also get a harrowing glance at Nick’s own self sabotage. He’s not a narrator you can trust; he gets confused by reflections and his own thoughts. On top of that, he’s selfish with questionable morals, but at the same time, his own bad decisions haunt him. In a way, it is reminiscent of Theo in The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, although not as devious and cunning.

One of the genius parts of Owen’s writing here is the uncertainty around Nick: is he a psychopath, a sociopath, a schizophrenic, or something else? Does he know what he is doing is wrong? How deep does his influence go? Some people might want more clear cut answers, but by leaving that to the reader’s imagination, we are able to paint Nick in whatever life we deem suitable. Or darkness. Whichever you prefer.

Honestly, having listened to a bunch of audio books over the past month, this would have done very well as an audio book. I found myself skimming passages that I didn’t think important, only for details to come back up again later. An audio book might have helped negate that, or possibly a break in the long detailed paragraphs that took us back through Nick’s life. But this is a small thing that doesn’t take away from the story.

I do think, as much as I enjoyed this story, the book won’t be for everyone. It involves problem solving on your own. The crime itself isn’t hard to uncover: two individuals steal something that lead to their own pasts unraveling. Instead, what you are really putting together, is the long and entwined story of Nick, the Peacock Sisters, Lydia, and the rest of their acquaintances. Are any of them actually good? Are they all suffering from delusions of grandeur? Or, even at the end, are we being lied right in the face?

If you enjoy a good thriller, check out The Weighing of the Heart, and make your own decisions about Nick’s actions. It’s worth it.

And here is a great review by @clairyfairyfluff:

I love @paultowen's style of writing! Right from the beginning of the book he draws you in painting a wonderful picture of New York. (So much so I want to go again even more now!) The book is beautifully told through Nick's eyes. This has everything for me! Crime, romance, Egyptology and obsession! It’s a stunning read, one which you easily fall for the characters. Are they all that they seem? Read it and find out!  🌟🌟🌟🌟/5

You can buy The Weighing of the Heart – which won the People’s Book Prize for fiction 2020 – for 99p / 99c here.

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The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen: winner of the People’s Book Prize for fiction 2020

Delighted to say that my novel The Weighing of the Heart is the winner of the People's Book Prize for fiction 2020. 

'This extraordinary debut novel combines a crime story, evocative portrayals of New York and Egyptian mythology. Beautiful prose makes this a must-read.' - Waterstones 

You can watch the ceremony below. ��

And you can buy The Weighing of the Heart for 99p / 99c here.

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Paul Tudor Owen’s The Weighing of the Heart: how the novel got published

I talked to So Many Books, So Little Time about how my novel The Weighing of the Heart got published, and how life spookily imitated art on a research trip to the British Museum...

She is also offering a free copy for 1 lucky reader!

Or you can simply buy The Weighing of the Heart for 99p / 99c here.

The Weighing of the Heart has been shortlisted for the People’s Book Prize 2020.

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Paul Tudor Owen... at home with the Peacocks

I talked to Donna at She Just Wanted to Read about my novel The Weighing of the Heart, and the apartment building on the Upper East Side owned by the Peacock sisters, where much of the action takes place (pictured)...

You can buy The Weighing of the Heart for 99p here or 99c here, and read its numerous 5-star reviews!

It has been shortlisted for the 2020 People’s Book Prize.

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Paul Tudor Owen’s The Weighing of the Heart review: ‘I could spend hours writing about this book’

Donna at She Just Wanted to Read has written a lovely four-star review of my novel The Weighing of the Heart.

Four Stars!

It’s difficult to know where to start and I could spend hours writing about this book. It took me a mere two days to get through.

As a debut novel, this is up there with the best of them. It’s a complex story with so many layers, including mental health, love, betrayal, a British man finding his way in America and Egyptian mythology! (Where can I find myself a scarab?!)

For me, this was a real page turner which picked up its pace suddenly and gave a great twist towards the end. I’d be so excited if there was a prequel from Hannah or a follow up from Lydia and their point of view! 

It is difficult to talk about the story without giving too much away, so I do wholeheartedly advice you to go away and buy this book to read for yourself, but I love how it turns on it’s head almost and your viewpoints and feelings towards characters are constantly changing.

You find yourself asking questions about the characters and the answers being revealed in a way that keeps you turning the pages. This book is definitely expertly written in terms of character development and I will remember this one.

The focus around Egyptian mythology grabbed me straight away, this has always been an era I have been intrigued by and really enjoyed looking up different parts of it as a result of this read raising it to my attention.

It was a very easy read and I enjoyed it so much I would like to put the link here for you should you wish to take a look for yourself.

Have you read this book? If so, let me know as I’d love to hear from you to discuss it. If not, you definitely should!

You can buy The Weighing of the Heart for 99p here or 99c here, and read its numerous 5-star reviews!

It has been shortlisted for the 2019-20 People’s Book Prize.

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Review of The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen: ‘a book with many layers’

A lovely review of The Weighing of the Heart from Lainy at So many books, so little time. She says it is a book with many layers that would be perfect for a book club discussion...

Nick Braeburn has broken up with his partner and finds himself moving into an apartment with two quirky older ladies. They have some rarities but it is the Egyptian art piece he is drawn to, that and his artist neighbour Lydia. Before long Nick finds the temptation too much, all round and him and Lydia commit a crime that has long lasting consequences for both.

The book covers a lot of ground, some Egyptian/art stuff that I actually found interesting and looking up. We look at the human psyche, in a subtle way then becoming more prominent, behind the main story of what is happening. Relationships, trust, honesty, lies, betrayal, jealousy to name but a few. For such a short book it packs in quite a bit with unexpected tones and layers nodding to mental health.

Nick is from England but the story centers in New York so a wee bit of trip fiction in there for you but for me it was the Egyptian tie in, the dreams and how that interlinked with what Nick was doing, thinking, feeling. A book with many layers, I think would make for a brilliant book club discussion because so many will take different impressions and points from it. 3.5 for me this time, I look forward to seeing what else Owen has to offer and certainly want to look more into Egyptian legends/mythology.

You can buy The Weighing of the Heart here.

And you can vote for it for the People's Book Prize 2020 here.

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Reviews of Paul Tudor Owen’s The Weighing of the Heart: ‘Cannot wait for more from this author’

A short but to-the-point review of my novel The Weighing of the Heart from Helen @midnightangelbookheaven - thanks a lot Helen. 

For the author's debut novel it was written with years of experience. Really enjoyed the well paced plot and the descriptions of New York. Cannot wait for more from this author.

Meanwhile, @bookpage5 calls The Weighing of the Heart "brilliant" and says she couldn't put it down.

I couldn’t let go of this book. The story is set in New York. Nick Braeburn leaves his girlfriend Hannah in their tiny apartment. His friend, Jeff has aunts who have a huge late-nineteenth-century apartment block, with an elegant rooftop garden over looking Central Park.  The Peacock sisters agree to let Nick stay. He worked late finishing paintings, photographed them, wrote descriptions of his work and artistic philosophy and sent emails to galleries and studios and magazines. A Portuguese woman lives across the roof garden who Nick gets to know. 

A crime is going to happen in this page-turning book, and during reading my way through I found out why this book is named The Weighing of the Heart. A brilliant story that I recommend about the art world with a crime committed. 

Another very positive review, this one from Patrice Ruth Diamond Gotting aka prdg:

We follow Nick, he’s newly single and his friend tells him his elderly aunts have a spare room in their apartment block in the upper east side. Everything seems liked it’s falling into place, he has a room, a small one, but it’s a roof over his head, in a really nice and well sought after part of New York for a more than reasonable price & there’s a very pretty lady that lives in the apartment opposite.

He soon plucks up the courage to introduce himself to Lydia and it turns out she’s an artist too, what are the chances?

They start to bond over their mutual love of art, but one day decide to take it too far and do something that they can’t take back afterwards. Very quickly things start to unravel and they start lying to get themselves out of the hole they’ve been digging.

I won’t give away any more but this story really shows that you really can never trust the picture people portray of themselves. It was a great story that had me sucked in. I loved the way that Egyptian mythology was woven in so well. It left you learning things without you even really realising because it was just part of the story.

And here’s a rave review from @booksbybindu, who urges you to read The Weighing of the Heart: 

The Weighing Of The Heart was thoroughly enjoyable. It’s part art heist, part romance, part psychological thriller and I loved it. It kept you on tenterhooks and I was desperate to figure what was the truth of this story!

I liked the idea of a love-torn young guy in New York living in a Fifth Avenue apartment with some eccentric sisters. It was giving off classic crime vibes of the 1920s, especially with the inclusion of the Egyptology which was all the rage then. But in fact it was also a modern romance story or was it? Was it in fact about control and manipulation? I love having the notion of an unreliable narrator as it always makes you question how you are perceiving things. Even if it does turn out that the narrator was fine all along! 

I enjoyed the characters of Nick and Lydia as both of them came across as being damaged souls and that the romance was a car crash waiting to happen. Both had mystery behind them. What has happened during Nick’s breakup with Hannah and why had Lydia split up with her husband? I do think you could probably make a novel out of the sisters though - their life sounds like a riot! I wish we had found out more about them. 

The story was enjoyable and completely believable. The lure of temptation is strong for many and Nick was unable to deny it. I liked the resolution for Nick - there were hints and pointers throughout the book but were subtle enough not to ruin the resolution. 

This is a strong debut from Paul and I urge you to read it! 

Plus bookstgrammer @c.isfor.claire_reads has published an extract from The Weighing of the Heart. Have a read of it here if you’ve ever tried to parallel park in front of a crowd… 

You can buy The Weighing of the Heart for 99p here or 99c here, and read its numerous 5-star reviews!

And you can vote for The Weighing of the Heart for the People’s Book Prize 2020 here.

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Review: The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen: ‘incredibly original, passionate and powerful’

A really glowing review of my novel The Weighing of the Heart from Lynne aka The Book-Reviewing Mum:

Well this is definitely not like something I have ever read before! A story which is based around Egyptian Mythology and Art, it really took me to different places where normal books wouldn’t!

I have never read a novel based on Egyptian Mythology before and actually before I read this book I googled the title ‘The Weighing Of the Heart’ and it told me all about this Ancient Egyptian history! I only have a basic knowledge on Ancient Egypt and I actually ended up learning something which I loved!

You can really feel the passion the author has for art in this book as well, with a number of famous paintings and artists being mentioned and a lot of the story also being based around art, it was talked about a lot which I also thoroughly enjoyed! It was refreshing to read something that’s based around such different subjects than I am used to!

We follow the main character Nick through the book from moving to a new place in New York due to a breakup, to him falling in love and basically losing his mind a little!

He moves in with the Peacock Sisters who are very wealthy and have an amazing apartment in a more lavish part of New York! Their apartment is filled with expensive and beautiful artwork which include lots of originals!

While living here Nick meets Lydia who lives across the hall and also rents from the Peacock sisters! They get to talking and both realise they share the same passions which not only include art but also art that is based on Egyptian Mythology and history and this draws them together!

They embark on a romantic love affair, but Nick is always slightly paranoid shall we say, he ends up seeing things that others possibly don’t, becomes quite jealous which drives him up the wall.

One day they commit an impromptu crime which was hardly planned and this is when things start to change for the 2 of them!

They deal with the guilt and their own thoughts differently and this is where the cracks begin to appear and they start to learn things about each other that they previously did not know…

…and well you will have to read the book to find out where this takes them!

I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline, I loved how it touched on so many genres, from romance, crime, thriller and I would class it as slightly magical with some of the mythology and how can you go wrong with a book that includes so much!

I loved how in different chapters it would take you back to Nick’s past and Lydia’s past so we could learn more about each character! It really helped build an understanding as to who they are, and why they act the way they do!

This book is a really easy read and super easy to follow! The romance, crime and mythology really kept me engaged and I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen in the end!

I’d like to give this book 4 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ for being so incredibly original, educational, passionate, and powerful!

An Awesome Read!

Another positive review of The Weighing of the Heart, this one from Bex aka That Bookish Fangirl, who calls the novel "beautifully written".

So this book is definitely not my usual type but an art heist and Egyptian mythology? Sign me up. For his debut novel Paul does a fantastic job in fully immersing the reader into the story line and New York. Personally I didn’t connect with the main characters and would have loved to read more about the Peacock sisters but that didn’t mean I could put the book down. It’s beautifully written and you can really tell that Paul has a passion or at least did a lot of research onto Art and Artists which was great to read. Also who doesn’t love a twist at the end of a book?

It’s unsurprising that this book has been shortlisted for the People's Book Prize 2020.

And here's another very positive review of The Weighing of the Heart, this one from the.b00kreader, who was "captivated by the writing style and the plot".

This was quite an intriguing read.

After his breakup, Nick moves in with the Peacocks. In the adjoining apartment lives a young woman, Lydia, who has recently been divorced. As they both get into a crime... things don't exactly work like you'd expect.

Throughout this book, I was captivated by the writing style and the plot. I do feel as though Nick was way too overprotective of Lydia. The ending was not what I had expected, I was expecting a completely different outcome. But there ain't no complaints!

**TRIGGER WARNING** This book contains details of stolen items and I feel, some manipulation. Please be aware of this before purchasing / reading.

Another great review, this one from Kirsti aka Mrs Feg Fiction:

I was very excited to read this one because I love to support independent publishers and authors where I can. The blurb of this book is also very interesting, an Englishman in New York who is fascinated by Egyptian mythology and art. A guy down on his luck who happens to find himself living in a lavish Upper East Side apartment which he rents from the exuberant and slightly eccentric Peacock sisters.

Enter Lydia their other lodger, who happens to be Portuguese, beautiful and also interested in ancient Egypt and boom you've got a love interest that quite quickly develops into an unorchestrated heist... You're interested now right?! 😉

@paultowen writes really well and despite this being his debut book, I didn't struggle with the writing style at all. I fell into the storyline quickly and the energy moved along at a good pace.

The main character, Nick is not hugely likeable because it's clear early on that he has some demons and there's something sinister about his past. Lydia is more likeable, she's a bit of a wimp, but she's smart and relatable. The Peacock sisters are hilarious, in a good way.

There are lots of parts to this story, it is by no means all about the crime. I particularly enjoyed learning about the Egyptian Mythology and it's clear the author has a keen interest in this. There is a great deal of depth to each character and you do need to do a fair amount of reading between the lines for parts of the story.

I felt the ending was a little rushed and I had more unanswered questions than I would have liked, but I think that might be kind of the point.

Overall a solid debut.

Here's another great review of The Weighing of the Heart, this one from Soph aka Book, Blog & Candle:

In The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen, our main character is Nick Braeburn. An Englishman in New York who has recently lost his girlfriend, his job and his apartment. Luckily, he is taken in by the eccentric Peacock sisters. However, trouble starts when he and his beautiful neighbour take advantage of their kindness and commit a despicable crime. 

Nick is a polite, unassuming and perfectly nice character but it's not quite enough to cover all of the skeletons in his closet. He quickly falls for Lydia, the classic next door, both connected by their love for Egyptian art based on Egyptian mythology. However, there is a thin line between love and obsession which is a definitely theme throughout the book! As we all know, obsession feeds into paranoia and Nick's true colours are soon revealed. 

There was amazing imagery and fantastic writing all throughout this book. I loved how Ancient Egyptian mythology was woven seamlessly alongside the storytelling. I knew it was going to be my kind of book when I read the blurb, so it's no surprise that I read it in one sitting and loved it! 

The Weighing of the Heart is a great mystery and perfect for fans of The Goldfinch! 

Buy The Weighing of the Heart for 99p here or 99c here, and read its numerous 5-star reviews!

And you can vote for The Weighing of the Heart for the People’s Book Prize 2020 here.

[paul-tudor-owen]

Reviews: Paul Tudor Owen’s The Weighing of the Heart: ‘a wonderful debut novel’

A great review of my novel The Weighing of the Heart from Bookstagrammer Geraldine Gatsby, who calls the book "wonderful". It's also the first time I've been compared to Mr Bean - but probably not the last. 

The Weighing of the Heart is the wonderful debut novel by Paul Tudor Owen. The main character Nick is the one that we follow throughout the book - he comes across as a very likeable character and appealing to all of those around him - a real charmer you could say!

But as the narrative goes on we see Nick’s character start to fall apart. I feel the book makes the reader think - and we have a lot questions about his past we need answered - throughout the book some things come together and some questions we as the reader may have are answered! (But I will not reveal any spoilers.)

The main plot is that Nick’s character takes a room in New York with two wealthy sisters - and soon falls in love with a piece of art ‘The Weighing of the Heart‘ and it becomes something that, in some ways, haunts Nick - it becomes a bit of an obsession.

Across from where Nick lives is a lady named Lydia who is also into art - she is also very mysterious and of course this intrigues Nick more - and of course as the story goes on we see Nick and Lydia's relationship develop and romance blossoms.

One night they are on a date and come across a poster of ‘The Weighing of the Heart’ where Nick jokingly comments - we could swap this for the real thing and sell it to make money .... would they do this? Would they deceive people who have been so good to them? Will it be the crime of the century? Is all as it seems? ... you will have to read the book to find out...

I couldn’t help but think of the Mr Bean film where he swaps a painting for a poster 🙈😂... but I loved it!! Overall, The Weighing of the Heart is a good read. Lighthearted- romantic - thrilling - easy to read - thought provoking and I would definitely read from this author again - thank you for the chance to review @lovebookstours I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

Bookstagrammer Living the Life of a Bookworm has also reviewed The Weighing of the Heart, saying she enjoyed "the writing style and how descriptive it was", and that the book portrayed "how someone living in a big city can feel invincible and how obsession can lead to poor choices". 

Meanwhile, Just a Girl who Loves to Read writes:

This book is very different to one I would normally read but it was very interesting learning about the Egyptian art. I found it quite difficult to read as felt suspicious of both characters from the beginning and didn’t feel I could connect with them however saying that it did not stop me from turning the pages and being unable to put it down. A very interesting read with an unusual twist on crime and romance.

And here’s a lovely one by Maria of Varietats: 

This is a book that shows us how the circumstances makes us take difficult decisions, sometimes we are forced to do acts that seem horrible. We all have two faces, depending on the situations we will share one or another… so what will take “sweet” Nick to make an act of crime? You’ll have to read the book to discover the story!

I was attracted to this book since I’ve read the plot, I always been fascinated by the Egyptian art, so many words with just one “illustration”! You can ask how an “illustration” can be mixed in a story, easy, with the meaning. Our main character, Nick, will relate his feelings an emotions to the Egyptian art. It makes the story really special and original, believe me!

This is a story of love and loss; bittersweet but beautiful, romance and death… like life. I really loved this story, easy and quick to read I couldn’t stop turning pages since I started.

This is not a book to review in detail because I would tell you too much without noticing it; this is a book you’ll read in a breath, loving the dark humour and sweet scenes of the story, because even if there’s ugliness in the world, we can never forget that there’s a rainbow for the worst moments.

Ready?

Another fantastic review, this one from Mental Storm Books: 'I really recommend this book for anyone with an interest in art, history and a small amount of thievery.' 

I really enjoyed reading this, the style of writing reminded me a lot of Donna Tartt novels, and somehow a lot of The Picture of Dorian Grey too. It flowed beautifully and there was a real sense of things happening but at the same time nothing happening at all, especially in the beginning of the book. Something that made it feel as though Nick floated through life a little.

I loved the merging of art and history, especially the ancient Egyptians as I've never read a book with a focus around modern portrayals of their ancient Gods before. With a sprinkle of mentions here and there it was clear how much the characters knew, and how much I've forgotten about ancient Egyptian beliefs since leaving school!

My only criticism is that it ended far too soon. I feel slightly like I still have half a book left to read, I would have loved for it to continue as I have so many unanswered questions about Lydia and the Peacock sisters.

I really recommend this book for anyone with an interest in art, history and a small amount of thievery.

Buy The Weighing of the Heart for 99p here or $1.25 here, and read its numerous 5-star reviews!

And you can vote for The Weighing of the Heart for the People’s Book Prize 2020 here.

[paul-tudor-owen]

The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen review: ‘I found it hard to put down – so I didn’t!’

The Weighing of the Heart just received this fantastic 5-star review from Victoria Smith of sfgirlbybay.com/: "I found it hard to put down -- so I didn't!"

I finished The Weighing of the Heart in one, page-turning sitting. A witty, well-told story of a young Englishman in New York, reinventing himself as an artist along with a cast of characters I adored. It's also a wonderfully vivid and visual love story for the city of New York and I found myself aching for a visit. The writing is so accessible and yet Paul Owen weaves a wildly engaging tale of mystery and romance woven with an underlying theme of Egyptian mythology, which I normally might not be drawn to, but in this case, I couldn't get enough of. Told from the first-person perspective, artist Nick seems at first a bit hapless and charmingly good-natured, however, there's an underlying mistrust you slowly start to sense as you read on. He reminded me a bit of Tom from The Talented Mister Ripley as he rapidly begins to reveal a side of himself you may have only suspected might be a bit sinister. I found it hard to put down -- so I didn't! 

Buy it for 99p here or $1.21 here.

And you can still vote for The Weighing of the Heart for the People's Book Prize 2020 here.

[paul-tudor-owen]

Paul Tudor Owen’s The Weighing of the Heart review: ‘a fascinating look at the psychological ramifications of crime on two young souls in the Big Apple’

Aislynn d'Merricksson at Port Jericho calls The Weighing of the Heart a "fascinating look at the psychological ramifications of crime on two young souls brought together in the Big Apple" – and it inspired her to create these two artworks. Thanks Aislynn!

The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen was a fascinating look at the psychological ramifications of crime on two young souls brought together in the Big Apple. Nick Braeburn, in need of a place to stay, is directed to the Peacock sisters by their nephew. They have a small room in their sprawling flat, and need a part-time caretaker as they travel back and forth between a second residence. Another tenant, Lydia, lives in a small apartment nearby. As the two grow slowly closer to one another, drawn together by a love of art and Egypt, they plot to steal their landladies’ prize Hazlemere painting called ‘The Weighing of the Heart’, replacing it with a reprint. They sell it on the black market for way less than it’s true value, yet still a princely sum to two young ‘starving artist’ types. Ultimately, this is a story about a descent into jealousy, paranoia, obsession, and desperation. I loved the symbolism of the painting stolen and the subsequent downspiral the characters took. For me, it resonated with my personal spiritual beliefs- that we provide our own judgement to ourselves. The Egyptian aspects are what really lured me in, as they appeal to the archaeologist in me, who loves Egyptology and Egyptian myth. Thanks to this, I ended up being inspired to create the below picture.   The beginning felt a little slow to me, but still kept me engaged. I was quickly invested in the psychology of the story, the toll the characters actions took on themselves and one another. And the ending! That was just perfect. It took me off guard, yet looking back, I see all the early hints pointing to the true nature of one particular character. Highly recommended if you want an engaging psychological read!

The Weighing of the Heart has been shortlisted for the People’s Book Prize 2020. Vote for it here.

And buy it for only 99p on Kindle here (or $1.15 in the US). 

[paul-tudor-owen]

The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen – the cocktail

Nicole at the Bookworm Drinketh describes The Weighing of the Heart as having "beautiful prose" that "kept me wanting more".

She has also come up with an amazing cocktail inspired by the novel...

Okay, so this choice of cocktail may have been somewhat obscure. But, the entire premise of the book is highly wrapped in Egyptian mythology. The scarab being mentioned many times to “prevent your heart from testifying against you on that dreadful day of judgement”. I can only hope that this drink will do the same!

INGREDIENTS

1 ounce vodka

1/2 ounce melon liqueur, (like Midori)

1/2 ounce raspberry liqueur, (like Chambord)

1/2 ounce blue curacao

2 ounces sweet and sour mix

1 1/2 ounces cranberry juice

Ice

DIRECTIONS

Fill a double old-fashioned glass with ice. 

To the glass add the vodka, melon liqueur, raspberry liqueur, blue curaçao, and sweet & sour.

Pour the cranberry juice on top of the drink. You can let the juice float or stir it in for a creepy color change.

Bottoms up!

The Weighing of the Heart has been shortlisted for the People's Book Prize 2020. Vote for it here.

And buy it for only 99p on Kindle here.

[paul-tudor-owen]

The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen - shortlisted for the People’s Book Prize 2020

Really pleased to say that my novel The Weighing of the Heart has made it through to the final shortlist for the People's Book Prize 2020. Thanks very much to everyone who voted for me in the first round a few months ago. The next round is another public vote - this time to choose the overall winner. I would love it if you could vote for me. Just click here to vote. You just have to fill in your name and email address - you don’t have to leave a comment, and even if you voted in the 1st round you can vote again now. Thanks a lot! 

More about the book:

Following a sudden break-up, Englishman in New York Nick Braeburn takes a room with the elderly Peacock sisters in their lavish Upper East Side apartment, and finds himself increasingly drawn to the priceless piece of Egyptian art on their study wall - and to Lydia, the beautiful Portuguese artist who lives across the roof garden.

But as Nick draws Lydia into a crime he hopes will bring them together, they both begin to unravel, and each find that the other is not quite who they seem.

Paul Tudor Owen's intriguing debut novel brilliantly evokes the New York of Paul Auster and Joseph O'Neill.

You can buy The Weighing of the Heart and read its 19 five-star reviews on Amazon here.

It has been shortlisted for the People’s Book Prize 2020 and was longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize 2019.