The Wrath and The Dawn by Renee Ahdieh | A Review

Please welcome my dear friend Aparna, who is here with another new review. This time it is The Wrath and The Dawn by Renee Ahdieh.

Title: The wrath and The Dawn

Author: Renee Ahdiem

Pages:416

Genres: Romance, Y.A, Folktales and folklore, Fantasy

Buy from: Amazon

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.

Here is the review.

This book is rather hard for me to rate.It started out so well that I was sure this will end up as one of my favourites.The story,the language,the characters,everything was just so perfect.But somewhere along the way,the characters lost their initial charm.I still loved it,still finished it in one setting ,but at the end,what I felt was that it could have been something more.

The author has done an excellent job in creating a story which is so similar,yet completely different from the 'Arabian Nights'.The focus here is not on the tales,but the budding romance between Shahrzad(Shazi) and Khalid.It is portrayed exceptionally well.Yet,by the middle of it,I felt that there was too much romance and little else.Both Shazi and Khalid seemed to have forgotten everything else but each other.Even though completely justified,the transformation of Shazi from a scheming and vindictive girl to a lovesick one was a little hard for me to stomach.But who can object?Amor vincit omnia!

The characterisation of Khalid,the cursed hero is exemplary.His inner struggles and growth is real and palpable to the reader.

The Wrath and the Dawn is a beautiful,seductive romance with an ending that left me gasping and yearning for more.My only complaint is that it didn't deliver as much as it promised.

Rating 3.5/5

A Negotiated Marriage by Noelle Adams | A Review

So, the reason I read this book was because I was going to start a very tough classic and I wanted something quick to read before that. And since I am a big fan of arranged marriage trope, I decide to  choose one from the Goodreads list.

Given below are my own unbiased opinions.

Title: A Negotiated Marriage

Author: Noelle Adams

Genre: Romance

Pages: 134

Buy From: Amazon

A USA Today bestseller. 

Sex wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal. 

Three years into a marriage of convenience, Molly’s high-powered CEO husband wants to add a new term to their marriage agreement. Sex—without any messy emotional entanglements. But weekly sex with Luke, despite their carefully negotiated terms, is likely to get messy eventually. 

Content in a mutually beneficial arrangement, Molly isn’t going to fall for Luke the way she fell for an old lover, only to be crushed in the end. She vows to stay strong, no matter how much intimacy develops between them in bed. When her old lover returns, finally wanting a real relationship, Molly has the chance to give her heart to a man who will accept it. 

It’s too bad she now wants to give it to her husband, who has never admitted her heart is what he wants.

I have mixed emotions about the book. On one hand I absolutely adored Luke, but on the other hand I felt that the author had not done a good job on completely removing the veil between the readers and the characters.

On one hand I felt like meh after reading this but on the other hand, some scenes from the book kept replaying itself in my mind. 

I guess it was just one of those books, that felt flat while reading but had many memorable scenes that may make me cherish this book. As I said , it opened a mixed bag of motions.

So, I will make a list of pros and cons and you can decide for yourself, if you want to read ( it was 100 something pages and took me less than two hours. So, you don't have to invest much time in this). 

Pros

• The story starts, not when they enter a fake marriage but three years after it. I love this unique little twist.
• The characters were well developed. I loved the fact that Molly had her own job and could stand on her own feet even without her billionaire husband's help. She was an independent career woman who did not like taking her husbands money, since she believed she was not in a real marriage.
•  Luke was adorable.
• Even though it was told from Molly's point of view, I could understand Luke's perspective too. The author has done a wonderful job on that. It reminded me of Tangled by Emma Chase, where despite being told from the hero's POV, you could understand the heroine's emotions as clear as the sky ( although the hero was not as perceptive as us. Hihi)
• It was short.

Cons

• It was short, so the author, instead of showing many scenes has told them. Molly says that she is heartbroken about her ex-flame but the past scenes are not really well shown. She says that Luke is shy and charming but its not strongly shown. So many things were told that I felt like I was reading through a detailed summary of the novel.
• It had potential, so much potential, if only the author had quit writing the novel, as if it was an essay.
• In the blurb, it says about the returning ex-flame, but that dude just has a few lines utmost. He is just there as an excuse for Molly and Luke to get married, and then again to provide material for the pivotal moment.
• There was almost no character development of the secondary characters. I understand that the length of the book was a limitation, but it cannot be an excuse, considering the amount of words spent on describing frivolous things. It was like a movie with only two characters but with lots and lots of cameos ( Reminded me of Madonna's song- Bitch I am Madonna, I came to know about the barely 2 second cameos in it, after I saw its parody)
• The book fell flat to me.

So, My final rating would be 

Rating: 1/5

 Well on second thought I am changing my rating on account of the few memorable scenes.

Final Rating: 2/5

Now I am going to read my classic.