Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by notesbynnenna
The Wrath & the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh
2.0
This is a spoiler free review of both The Wrath & the Dawn and The Rose & the Dagger.
I cannot lie, these books were disappointing reads for me. The story is supposed to be a retelling of A Thousand and One Nights, but in the first book, I didn't find anything new or inventive about the story. I kept waiting for the author to put her own unique spin or perspective on the story, but it never happened. Instead, these books featured some YA tropes that tend to drive people crazy, including instalove (seriously, it takes the main character like 1-2 days to go from utterly vengeful to completely in love) and melodrama. I thought the main characters, Shazi and Khalid, were one-note, and I particularly expected better from our heroine.
I was really disappointed by the first book, but I decided to pick up the second anyway. The first one ends so abruptly and I wanted to know what happened next and how the author would change the storyline. Plus, I was hoping that the second book would be an improvement upon the first.
I did fare slightly better with the second book and I'd give it an extra half star for plot development because at least the plot finally deviated from A Thousand and One Nights. Still, a lot of the issues I had with the first book are prevalent in the second one. Sometimes I wanted to shake the characters and ask them why they were making the exact same mistakes they made in book one! Then, the main plot point of book one is resolved way too neatly and we get this other subplot that's confusing and kind of appears out of nowhere. You know at the beginning of this paragraph, I was willing to give a half star for the plot, but now I think I've convinced myself to take it back...
Long short story, I wanted, and was expecting, a lot more from this series. If you're looking to read an exciting retelling, I'd have to recommend that you look elsewhere.
I cannot lie, these books were disappointing reads for me. The story is supposed to be a retelling of A Thousand and One Nights, but in the first book, I didn't find anything new or inventive about the story. I kept waiting for the author to put her own unique spin or perspective on the story, but it never happened. Instead, these books featured some YA tropes that tend to drive people crazy, including instalove (seriously, it takes the main character like 1-2 days to go from utterly vengeful to completely in love) and melodrama. I thought the main characters, Shazi and Khalid, were one-note, and I particularly expected better from our heroine.
I was really disappointed by the first book, but I decided to pick up the second anyway. The first one ends so abruptly and I wanted to know what happened next and how the author would change the storyline. Plus, I was hoping that the second book would be an improvement upon the first.
I did fare slightly better with the second book and I'd give it an extra half star for plot development because at least the plot finally deviated from A Thousand and One Nights. Still, a lot of the issues I had with the first book are prevalent in the second one. Sometimes I wanted to shake the characters and ask them why they were making the exact same mistakes they made in book one! Then, the main plot point of book one is resolved way too neatly and we get this other subplot that's confusing and kind of appears out of nowhere. You know at the beginning of this paragraph, I was willing to give a half star for the plot, but now I think I've convinced myself to take it back...
Long short story, I wanted, and was expecting, a lot more from this series. If you're looking to read an exciting retelling, I'd have to recommend that you look elsewhere.