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October 09, 2015

The Wrath and The Dawn by Renee Ahdieh | A Review

Please welcome my dear friend Aparna, who is here with another new review. This time it is The Wrath and The Dawn by Renee Ahdieh.


Title: The wrath and The Dawn
Author: Renee Ahdiem
Pages:416
Genres: Romance, Y.A, Folktales and folklore, Fantasy
Buy from: Amazon

A sumptuous and epically told love story inspired by A Thousand and One Nights

Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi’s wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch . . . she’s falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend.

She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all.

Here is the review.

This book is rather hard for me to rate.It started out so well that I was sure this will end up as one of my favourites.The story,the language,the characters,everything was just so perfect.But somewhere along the way,the characters lost their initial charm.I still loved it,still finished it in one setting ,but at the end,what I felt was that it could have been something more.

The author has done an excellent job in creating a story which is so similar,yet completely different from the 'Arabian Nights'.The focus here is not on the tales,but the budding romance between Shahrzad(Shazi) and Khalid.It is portrayed exceptionally well.Yet,by the middle of it,I felt that there was too much romance and little else.Both Shazi and Khalid seemed to have forgotten everything else but each other.Even though completely justified,the transformation of Shazi from a scheming and vindictive girl to a lovesick one was a little hard for me to stomach.But who can object?Amor vincit omnia!

The characterisation of Khalid,the cursed hero is exemplary.His inner struggles and growth is real and palpable to the reader.

The Wrath and the Dawn is a beautiful,seductive romance with an ending that left me gasping and yearning for more.My only complaint is that it didn't deliver as much as it promised.

Rating 3.5/5