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A review by courtnoodles
The Wrath & the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh
4.0
I'm extremely torn with how to rate this book.
My hopes going into this book were through the roof. I'd been waiting since July to read this when I first put it on hold at my library, and I heard nothing but good things.
The start of this book, though, was ROUGH. Shazi was annoying and entitled. She had no interest in actually being queen, but used her queen status to essentially manipulate her staff into letting her do whatever she wanted. Her character was totally inconsistent, loving one moment and completely cold and calculating the next. I was never sure what was genuine. And nothing else in the story really made sense. The writing style was way too flowery for me to understand anything that was going on, motivations, emotions, anything. I thought it was gonna be a huge disappointment.
But about halfway through the book, something changed. I can't say specifically what. But some kind of switch went off and suddenly I was into it. Don't get me wrong, the writing is still too flowery for me to actually grasp the emotions and the feelings of the characters. I'm still not sure I can get behind Shazi and Khalid as individual people. But as a couple? One word. Hot.
They're really the only reason why I'm rating this so high. And it is primarily a romance, so it seems fair. But I absolutely devoured Khalid and Shazi's scenes, to the point where there was one line Khalid said that caused me to slam my face into the book and get my makeup on the pages.
My favorite kind of romances are, I don't know if I would say sexy ones, but I love it when the passion is more sensual and backed up with deep, deep adoration and love. That's Shazi and Khalid. So this review is all over the place, but I'm going with a comfortable 3.5 rounded up to 4 because I don't want to rate it any lower considering I paid for this with my own money, which I hardly ever do anymore, and I plan on reading the sequel ASAP.
My hopes going into this book were through the roof. I'd been waiting since July to read this when I first put it on hold at my library, and I heard nothing but good things.
The start of this book, though, was ROUGH. Shazi was annoying and entitled. She had no interest in actually being queen, but used her queen status to essentially manipulate her staff into letting her do whatever she wanted. Her character was totally inconsistent, loving one moment and completely cold and calculating the next. I was never sure what was genuine. And nothing else in the story really made sense. The writing style was way too flowery for me to understand anything that was going on, motivations, emotions, anything. I thought it was gonna be a huge disappointment.
But about halfway through the book, something changed. I can't say specifically what. But some kind of switch went off and suddenly I was into it. Don't get me wrong, the writing is still too flowery for me to actually grasp the emotions and the feelings of the characters. I'm still not sure I can get behind Shazi and Khalid as individual people. But as a couple? One word. Hot.
They're really the only reason why I'm rating this so high. And it is primarily a romance, so it seems fair. But I absolutely devoured Khalid and Shazi's scenes, to the point where there was one line Khalid said that caused me to slam my face into the book and get my makeup on the pages.
My favorite kind of romances are, I don't know if I would say sexy ones, but I love it when the passion is more sensual and backed up with deep, deep adoration and love. That's Shazi and Khalid. So this review is all over the place, but I'm going with a comfortable 3.5 rounded up to 4 because I don't want to rate it any lower considering I paid for this with my own money, which I hardly ever do anymore, and I plan on reading the sequel ASAP.