Review: The Wrath and the Dawn (SPOILERS)

Yesterday, I finished (in my opinion) the best YA fantasy book of 2015. There was action, love, and just wonderful poetic writing that I could not get enough of! The book I am talking about is The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh and if you haven't heard of it, YOU'RE WELCOME. Now let's discuss! And yes this review contains spoilers but you can find my spoiler free review here! 



So this book is based loosely on the story A Thousand and One Nights, which you notice from the very start. The heroine is a young girl named Shahrzad who volunteers herself to marry the Caliph of Khorsan, Khalid. However, she volunteers herself so that she can enact her revenge by killing the caliph because he had killed her best friend and previous wife, Shiva. But for the caliph this is normal because for every girl he marries, he must kill her by the next morning. Soon Khlalid realizes that Shahrzad isn't like the other girls and Shahrzad realizes that Khalid isn't the monster everyone portrays him as, including himself. 

"I will see tomorrow's sunset. This I swear to you."

To delay her death, Shahrzad comes up with a plan. She distracts the caliph by telling him a story and stops as soon as dawn comes without finishing it. Khalid allows Shahrzad to see the next day and this is the first time he has ever allowed this. The next night, Shahrzad does the same thing and Khalid still allows her to live. It's not until some nights later that the caliph never comes to see Shahrzad and in the morning she is taken away to be executed. BUT THEN IN ALL HIS GREATNESS, Khalid shows up and stops the execution because he had changed his mind. I kind of want to know why he decided to kill Shahrzad and then decided against it. It's at this moment where we see the feelings develop between Khalid and Shahrzad. 

"What are you going to do to me, you plague of a girl?" he whispered. "If I'm a plague, then you should keep your distance, unless you plan one being destroyed.""No. Destroy me.'"

Although Khalid and Shahrzad are starting to love on another, Shahrzad still can't forget that Khalid is a monster. He has killed countless young girls like herself including her best friend. But soon Shahrzad finds out there is more to this than Khlaid and Jalal and others are letting on. Khalid doesn't want to to Shahrzad the truth because he doesn't want her to carry the burden of helping the city. 

"I'm sorry joonam. For the secrets. For the locked doors. For everything. I promise to tell you one day. But not yet. Trust that some secrets are safer behind lock and key."

However, Khalid eventually tells Shazi the reason why he must kill his wives and that is because of AVA. Ava was Khalid's first wife and was married to her for a short time until she killed herself. She was depressed and a bit neglected by Khalid and soon killed herself thereafter. Because of this, Ava's father put a curse on Khalid. This curse made it so that in order for there to be rain and a prospering city, Khalid must kill 100 of his wives. If he doesn't do this his city and country will suffer. Khalid's hands are tied and this destroys him until he encounters Shahrzad. This is the one wife who he cannot kill, the one wife that will change everything. 

"One hundred lives for the one you took."

While we have the story of Shahrzad and Khlaid, we also follow the story of Tariq. Tariq, Tariq, Tariq. I AM NOT A FAN. In most YA fantasy there's that one character (usually male) that ruins everything because he believes a girl is his. Tariq is just completely possessive of Shahrzad, but he claims to be in love with her and wants her away from the "evil monster" aka Khalid. Just no. Tariq's just mad that the girl that he was supposed to marry was taken from him. Even when he realizes that Shahrzad has feelings for Khalid, he still thinks that she belongs with him! He's just so ridiculous. Even when Omar tries to tell him it's best for him to stay away from Shahrzad and let her be with Khalid, he ignores this! 

"A shared history does not entitle you to a future, my friend."

Although Omar didn't show up a lot in the book I really liked his presence. He was like the voice of reason for Tariq even though Tariq completely ignored him. Eventually, Tariq gets together with Shahrzad's father, Jahandar, to help get Shahrzad back. However, Tariq is completely unaware of the power that Jahandar has and the magic he is able to use to capture his daughter. That ending was so crazy and ended with that major cliffhanger that made me so angry. And I knew it was going to end with Khalid thinking that Shahrzad left because she wasn't in love with him. BUT THAT'S NOT TRUE AT ALL. I hope I'm wrong about this. He has to know that she loves him....HE HAS TO. 

"I love you a thousand times over. And I will never apologize for it."

Overall, I just really loved this book. The writing is beautiful and the characters are wonderful. The relationship Despina and Shahrzad  was awesome. They both are such headstrong and powerful young women that they can't help but collide at times. But with those collisions comes a really strong friendship that was really great to read about. They didn't tear each other down, rather they built each other up. The same can be said with Jalal and Khalid. Although Khalid never really wanted a relationship with his cousin in the past we can see something starting to form. Character development is becoming prominent in the story and I think we'll see even more in the next book. 

This book is just amazing and I want everyone to read it! It's so different from other YA fantasy out right now! It's beautiful and poetic and I just want to read it over and over. Five out of five stars! READ IT!