The Wrath & the Dawn (Wrath and the Dawn, #1)

by Renée Ahdieh

[paperbackjedi]

Shazi vows to take revenge upon the boy Caliph of Khorasan after he murders her best friend; something he has done to a different bride every night for the past month or so. Desperate to enact her revenge, she volunteers to marry him and comes up with a plan that will get her to the next dawn alive. Unfortunately (or fortunately) her plan works a little too well and now she finds herself not only surviving each night, but married to a man who is not quite the monster she imagined him to be. And she’s falling in love with him more every day.

H’OHBOY. I read this book in four hours straight through and I have to say, it was AMAZING. First of all, The Wrath and the Dawn is a retelling of Arabian Nights which I was only vaguely familiar with so I can’t speak to the nuances of the adaptation. I can only say that this book makes me want to read the source material. Let’s talk writing. The descriptions were intense and so beautiful that I could almost feel them. This book comes with a glossary in the back so if you’re not familiar with the culture or terminology, DO NOT LET THAT DETER YOU FROM READING THIS BOOK. I repeat, it was amazing. The writing is detailed and evocative and I often found myself closing my eyes after reading a paragraph to fully embrace the picture it created in my mind. Seriously, the descriptions of the food made me hungry so maybe don’t read this book on an empty stomach. :P

The characters were just as amazing as the prose. Shazi is a fierce heroine and she’s determined to be her own person and make her own judgement calls. Even when she starts to develop an attraction to Khalid, she remains staunchly independent and insists that she fight her own battles and even calls him out when she feels like he’s being possessive or too protective. Also, the girl can fight– not just mentally, but physically. All in all, she’s a very well-rounded, well-developed main character and I loved her immensely. Khalid was also a complicated character layered with guilt and the burden of leadership and a whole lot of responsibility. It’s odd because sometimes the reluctant misunderstood hero can get on my nerves, but his character was so beautifully fractured by the choices he was forced to make in service of his people that it really broke my heart and made me feel for him. I also loved his best friend Jalal who added some much needed comedy, charm, and warmth in areas that were pretty dark. The narrative sometimes switches to minor character POVs like Shazi’s father and her first love, Tariq and both of those characters had individual arcs that contributed to the overall story in surprising and interesting ways. Af first I felt frustrated at the shifts because I didn’t understand why it was necessary, but by the end of the book, you realize how all the different threads have woven together to create this heartbreaking situation and by then, I thought Ahdieh was a storytelling genius.

You wanna talk romance? LET’S DO IT. Shazi and Khalid together are a tour de force, but watching them get to that point was tense and the anticipation was half of the fun. Shazi definitely intends to kill this guy for the first half of the novel and you kind of want her to. But as she gets to know him, so do you and you begin to understand her dilemma, for the Caliph of Khorasan is not who we think he is nor what we would expect a murderer to be. And once the man is revealed, it’s harder and harder to see the monster the world has made him into. And when they come together, it’s freaking awesome. Passionate, wild, and powerful are adjectives that come to mind. Luckily, their story continues in the conclusion entitled The Rose and the Dagger which is due out in 2016. I will definitely be pre-ordering it when it’s announced. This is one of my favorite reads of the entire year and I highly recommend it. It’s an amazing novel rich in culture that is deftly and poetically explored. And I’m giving it five stars to boot. Guys, read this book. It’s beautiful.