"The Wrath and The Dawn" By Renee Ahdieh is a retelling of the Arabian Nights tale "1001 Nights." I think this is a fantastic retelling. The story grips your attention right away keeping the reader until the very end.
One hundred lives for the one you took.
One life to one dawn.
Should you fail but a single morn,
I shall take from you your dreams.
I shall take from you your city.
And I shall take from you these lives, a thousandfold...
Just knowing that bit of information right there, how could you not be intrigued? I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this story. I’ve never been a huge Arabian Nights tale person. I try not to dive too much in the huge hyped up books because most of the time I don’t end up liking them. There are a few rare occasions that I have felt differently like this one.
Then my friends and I decided to start a book club and this was going to be the first book that we read. Now I was thrust into reading it and boy am I glad that I did. It even got to the point that I got my mom to read the book and she loved it.
“The Wrath and The Dawn” focuses on Shahrzad. She volunteered to marry the murderous king. Her plan was to kill him right away. She wanted to extract revenge on him. Life or fate had a different idea for Shahrzad.
I absolutely loved Shahrzad’s character. I thought she was fantastic and so easily lovable. She wasn’t one of those girls that just fell in love on a whim. She was feisty and strong. She didn’t give up easily. She put up a huge fight. She was even fighting against her feelings because she didn’t want to have them. Ahdieh did a great job building Shahrzad’s character. This is a young woman on a mission and somewhere in the middle of the book, she changes her mission. It was amazing to see this woman’s journey and why she made the decisions that she did.
Khalid is the hard one. I love him and I hate him. I feel for him. I want him to be treasured. Khalid is misunderstood. That is the best way to put it, I think. I feel like I don’t know him as well as I would like too. He does his own form of growing up. He feels like he doesn’t have many choices and he finds out that really he does. He can choose love if he wants it. I think Khalid and Shahrzad had a great chemistry.
One of my favorite things about this book is the fact that there is no INSTALOVE. Yes you heard me right. Actually it is quite the opposite Shahrzad hates Khalid. It was quite interesting watching these two have a friendship, relationship, marriage….thing, or whatever we should call it. I liked this the most. It was great that the characters had to work out their conflicts and problems.
The ending totally left me wanting more. Ahdieh did a fantastic job with "The Wrath and The Dawn." The writing is gorgeous. She was able to hook me as a reader right away. I was completely immersed and interested in Shahrzad’s story and soon the Khalid’s too. I think Ahdieh is going to be a fantastic author to follow. I look forward to book two and any other books Ahdieh may write.
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