Review: The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh

3 January, 2017 Kat Kennedy Reviews 9 comments

Alright, alright. Alright, alright, alright.

Let’s get this out of the way now. This book is trash. All the way, to the end of the road, it’s absolute trash.

And this was me:

Gawd I loved this book. All the while I knew it was bad. Just down to it’s very core it’s a bad book. But it is so. damn. addictive.

So Shazi’s best friend Shiva has just been murdered by the King, Khalid. So she leaves her lover, Tariq and volunteers as tribute (sorry not sorry) to be Khalid’s next wife.

Now, let me get the complaining out of the way early.

Shazi is annoying. Like very obtuse. She is full of pride (which I love) but she’s very clumsy about how she goes about discovering the Khalid’s secrets (which I hate) – which basically boils down to her whining to him a lot about them instead of doing any real investigation. Then there’s the time when she pretends to everyone that she can’t shoot arrows and lets herself be goaded into revealing that, actually, she’s a great shot within like 5 minutes. Way to go, there Shazi.

Also, the romance is super instalovey and I never really bought it. Obviously, there was a sizzle or I would have been out the door so fast you’d have thought I was being chased by a bear. But when it came to their devotional love proclamations, I was left unmoved.

The writing is a little subpar but it’s nothing to cry about.

Also the plot. Shazi barely even tells the stories. Like, it happens a few times but mostly it’s so quickly done and over with and they’re very underwhelming so I’m not sure, like, if I were a blood-thirsty sultan, that I would spare her life for those stories. I mean, I’m just assuming here because I’ve never slaughtered dozens of innocent girls. Maybe if I did, I’d be as easily amused as Khalid was, I don’t know. THIS IS ALL CONJECTURE.

Okay. Deep breath. So what did I like about this book?

Gawd, I don’t know.

If I could pinpoint the magic that was The Wrath and the Dawn and bottle it up and sprinkle it over everything I would. There was just something, ultimately, very readable about it. It made me want to devour everything and never stop.

It was like doritoes, you know? You know they’re bad for you, but you can’t stop eating. So moarish. I need more. I’m reading The Rose and the Dagger immediately and not one of youse can stop me.