A sumptuous and epically told love story inspired by A Thousand and One Nights
Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi’s wit and will, indeed, 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 dearest friend.
She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all. (Goodreads)
I have finally given up on this book as a lost cause – that is to say, I DNFed it. I have been trying to read it and get into it for what feels like forever, but for some reason, it is just not happening! I jumped onto this bandwagon (reluctantly, I might add) because of all of the hype surrounding it. While a lot of people seemingly love this book, I am one of those who just didn’t/doesn’t.
I am not even sure if it was the book itself or me. I found it difficult to actually connect to the people and the events happening because it all seemed so jumpy. One minute our main character, Shahrzad, hates the Caliph and the next minute she is fighting urges to kiss him and what not. The flow of events just didn’t seem right to me – which is probably why I found it so hard to get into this book.
The jump between Shahrzad’s point of view and Tariq’s wasn’t obvious. If I put the book down and came back to it a while later, I would often forget who and what I was reading and I would have to skim back a couple of pages just to figure it out. I found myself doing other stuff – like catching up on GoT or Pretty Little Liars instead of wanting to read this book.
The only character I actually liked was Jalal. His witty, easy going character was refreshing to read after ploughing my way through the rest to get to his parts. He is someone that I could easily get along with – he is just one of those characters that you can’t help but love.
The Hype Monster got its teeth into this one, which is a shame. I think this is one of those books that is considered to be marmite within the book world – either you love it or you hate it. I personally didn’t enjoy it, but it should still be read and you should still form your own opinions about this book! Based on Jalal’s character, I am going to give this book 2/5 stars.
Lauren's Page Turners 