The Wrath and the Dawn

By: Renee Ahdieh

Narrated by: Ariana Delawari

Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

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 18-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 16-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.

©2015 Renée Ahdieh (P)2015 Listening Library

Wanna read the next one as well.

Loved it.. The ending is a bit unexpected I feel bad for them hope they find each other again.

great book

I loved the story and the voice was good. deserved to be bought. really worth the money

Yall.....

This book completely tore me apart, put me back together, then did it again

Great romance. Weak plot.

This is a retelling of 1001 Arabian Nights. The caliph (king/sultan?) of Khorasan has this tradition of marrying girls and sending them to the noose the next morning. Our MC, Shahrzad, volunteers to marry Khalid (the caliph) to avenge her best friend Shiva, one of his recently ill-fated wives, thinking she can intrigue Khalid with her stories to live another day while she figures out how to kill him. But Khalid doesn't seem like the monster she was expecting, and her feelings soon start to get in the way of her revenge.

Thoughts:

The beginning thrusts you in without any info dumping, which is ideal, as info dumping can be quite tedious and boring, but the execution wasn't so great because those first chapters were very confusing. And then the terms. Good lord. There are so many! When you are listening to passages full of words like "mankalah","shamshir","sahib","rida" and then add in everyone's foreign-sounding names, it creates a great deal of confusion. It took me a while to figure out who was who and what all the terms meant. It was THAT confusing.

I enjoyed the romance. It suffers from insta-love syndrome but it was swoony and had me hooked despite the lack of an actual plot. But I would have loved for Shahrzad to have a little more conviction, to actually try to kill the dude before she turned into a bowl of conflicted, indecisive mush.

The writing, though beautiful, is too flowery for my taste. I would guess that about 40% of the book is spent on describing places and Shahrzad's clothes. It's over descriptive and filled with dramatic similes. Some people might like that but I wasn't a fan.

As I mentioned earlier, there's not much of a plot. It's basically a story about Shahrzad getting to know Khalid and his secrets, and falling in love with him at the same time. But it was a strong enough romance with a decent dose of mystery to hold my interest.

Bottom line: It wasn't perfect but I enjoyed it.

A captivating and beautiful story.

Would you listen to The Wrath and the Dawn again? Why?

Holy smokes! This book totally blew me away and I did not expect that at all. Rhodes' ability to seamlessly weave contemporary with high fantasy was impressive. Of course, I'm not an expert in this genre but maybe I need to read more Urban Fantasy, I think I've only read a couple, because I really like it. I was easily able to connect with each character since it was told from three POVs. Despite the fact that the story itself didn't progress as much as I expected, yet I still loved it so much, speaks wonders to Rhodes' ability to capture a reader's attention and actually keep it. The pacing is smooth and I read this book fairly quickly, but yes, the story itself didn't really go as far as I thought it would. Much of the action and excitement doesn't happen until the the last quarter of the book, but the way Rhodes laid the groundwork and set up the series during the first three-quarters of the book was well done. I was never bored, to say the least.

The true main character is Crystal, as her family is very much tied into this secret society called Hawkspear and its connection to the world of Mythica. After she unknowingly opens a magical book, the Bronze Codex, her life is changed forever. She uncovers the truth of why her father left her family, all the secrets her mother never told her, albeit in an achingly slow way, and how dangerous her life has now become. As a whole, I really liked Crystal. She has an artistic spirit and a love for funny t-shirts. I also liked that wasn't easily manipulated and was pretty kickass when she needed to be. And when the girl wants answers, she gets them no matter how she has to. One of my favorite scene of hers would have to be when she went out for sushi with Farrell. Even though it was told from Farrell's perspective, I reveled in how she handled everything and I was very happy with how their relationship progressed. It was very atypical and I loved that.

Oh, and I have to say that Crystal's mother bugged me so much. Yes, I know her heart was in the right place and she's being all protective, but I'm seriously sick of characters "protecting" others by lies of omission. It's becoming a big pet peeve of mine. It's okay when the kid is young or lacks the mental capacity, but if it's a sane, capable person, there's a limit to how many secrets and lies I can stand. In real life, I can't stand them at all, but in books I can only take so much before it becomes unnecessary and rage-inducing.

Farrell's story did not turn out how I was expecting at all, but in a good way. I thought the author was going to follow the usual character progression that you would come to expect of a seemingly bad guy with a conscience, but that wasn't the case here with Farrell. I don't know how his character will change in the rest of the series and if he will indeed follow that tried and true plotline, but so far, I like not liking him. His family has been in this secret society for a long time and after the death of his older brother, Farrell is welcomed into the inner circle. It's obvious his brother's death isn't what it seems, at least I hope, and I only wish we had delved into that a little more. His brother Adam plays a significant role in the book as well and it was interesting kind of seeing both sides play out. I liked how protective Farrell was with his brothers, but I didn't like how easily manipulated he was when it came to Hawkspear and Markus, the leader of the society. He's a bit over his head, lets just leave it at that.

Maddox is actually from Mythica and his role revolves around Becca, Crystal's sister. I really enjoyed being in Mythica and I thought Rhodes creating quite an intriguing world. Becca is put into a coma after touching the Bronze Codex, and is brought to that world as a spirit. There, only Maddox can see and interact with her as he has a very special magical power. There's a lot that even Maddox doesn't know about his past and how important a role he plays in the politics of Mythica, but as the story progresses, his story unravels a lot faster than on the Contemporary side of the story, and I appreciated that. Becca and Maddox's relationship evolves into a romance, naturally, and I thought they were so cute together. These were two innocent and sweet characters who have a lot of crazy and intense things happen to them in Mythica. I felt like there wasn't nearly enough time with them and I hope we see so much more of them together as the series progresses.

Aside from that one big issue I mentioned above, I loved the book. That ending was all kinds of craziness, much of which I expected but also a lot of which I didn't see coming. I didn't want to stop reading. It was funny because I brought it with me to class and was reading it during breaks and it drove me crazy when I had to put it down. All I know for sure is that I'm super eager to read Rhodes' previous series and see how it all connects. I even got the audiobooks ready for me to listen to next. I'm so excited! Everyone needs to read this book.

What does Ariana Delawari bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

This was my first time listening to Ariana and I enjoyed her voice for the most part. She portrayed Sharzhad nicely and I loved her pronunciation of everythiing. Her accents were smooth and on-point. She's not particularly skilled with male voices though and I think that added to the fact that I couldn't always distinguish who was who and who was speaking at certain times. She never really gave each character their own voice, something that made them stand out, so that was another reason why I had to repeatedly re-listen to certain parts to make sure I understood what was going on. If you plan on listening to this book, I'd suggest you pay a little more close attention if you want to follow the story.

What a fantastically captivating tale.

Definitely 4.5 stars for this one. I loved how it was slowly build up. Even the characters became intense slowly. Khalid secret was never forgotten. I loved the secret too.Khalid and Shazi love story that left in a cliffhanger which was perfectly executed.

The reader ruined the book.

Good take on a classic story. A bit heavy handed with the SAT vocabulary. But mostly, the narrator is terrible! She sounds like a 6th grader learning to read out loud dramatically.

Very good

I was hoping it would be a one and done but looks like it will be a series. If the rest of the series is as good as the first book it will be a good one. I plan on replaying the book as the names are hard to follow at times .

Beautiful story...

I would definitely recommend this book to those whose hearts long for a beautiful love story full of wonder and desire. The story was beautifully written and the performance was somewhat well done. I think there could have been more verity to the voices and more passion in the tone at some points of the story to give it more meaning, but overall a beautiful story worthy of a motion picture and a thousand fans, but most of all the recognition it deserves.

Narration could have been better

It was difficult at points to understand which character was talking as the narrator didn’t do much to change her speech to indicate different speakers, so dialogue kind of ran together. Story was fabulous though.