Reviews with content warning for Murder - The Wrath and the Dawn

I’ve wanted to read this book in forever. This book was gifted to me by my friends for my birthday and I was excited to read it. It took me a while to get into, but once I got into it, I really enjoyed it.

This book has multiple POVs from this love triangle. There is Khalid, who is an eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. There is Shahrzad, she is sixteen and she has volunteered to marry Khalid. But she does have a clever plan to stay and exact revenge on Khalid for the murder of her best friend and the countless other girls that Khalid has executed. Shazi’s wit and will does 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 friend. She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems, and neither are the death of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all. The third POV is Shazi’s best friend named Tariq and he has been in love with Shazi since they were children. He has found out what Shazi is doing and is determined to rescue her and take her home and to kill the king once and for all.

I struggled with this book at first and I think it’s because of the lack of world-building at the beginning or a storyline, it jumped in straight to the action that I sort of had to read ahead to then get what the hell was going on. I didn’t know this was a retelling of Thousand and One Nights and I've never read that book, so I went in completely blind. The world-building did get there eventually but for a fantasy I look for the world-building and how immersed I can get in the world, and it just didn’t happen here.

The thing that saved this book were the characters and the romance that was budding between Khalid and Shazi. It was 1000% enemies-to-lovers, and I was down for it. The tension, the mystery, the conflicting emotions they were both feeling and how they slowly opened to each other. I liked the mystery aspect of it and how you didn’t know who was trying to poison Shazi. I loved how bad-ass Shazi is, like everyone around her is trying to protect her and then she’s like no I can’t protect my damn self. I loved the side characters such as the guards and the maidens and would have loved to have seen more of them.

The storyline managed to keep me hooked but overall felt like it was just missing that extra sparkle that would have made it five stars. But I am looking forward to the next book of the duet.

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truegrit's review against another edition

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Really gross set up - like an enemies to lovers situation but he's a murderer and rapist? Could not abide by the story line or characters, really yucky.

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anneliedip's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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kryzysowa_narzeczona's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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mermaidmommy19's review against another edition

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3.0

I got this book because I loved RA's The Beautiful series (or at least what has been released thus far).

I enjoyed this book and don't have anything bad to say about it, but there wasn't much that stuck out to me either. There wasn't much umph, but it was a good, quick read that I thoroughly enjoyed.

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