Book review - the Wrath and the Dawn

[Viviana Kingston]

Title: The Wrath and the Dawn
Author: Renée Ahdieh
Genre: YA fantasy fiction and romance
Rating: 4/5
Page count: (ebook) 435 pages
Category: Traditional publishing, first in series
Age rating: young adult
Warnings: mild kissing
Synopsis:
A retelling of Arabian Nights.
Khorasan is suffering, and all because of their caliph, Khalid, who forcefully marries the girls of the land each day to execute them at dawn. But Shahrzad is different. She volunteers to marry the caliph, not only with the intention to stay alive, but to exact revenge for the terror he spread, but not everything goes to plan. While Shahrzad weaves her tales, she finds herself unravelling the mystery of the caliph who is nothing like she imagined. With hearts and minds at war, will Shahrzad be able do what she came for?

Comments + opinion:
The book was a page turner, though it did lose me a bit at the beginning. I wasn’t interested in Tariq’s point of view and really thought he was a bit of a droll, but the rest of the story was pretty good, especially when she’d recount tales though it happens a little less than I thought it would. But the stories she did tell were effective - they related to what was happening in the story and acted as sort of Easter eggs to what was yet to come which I thought was a pretty good way of foreshadowing.