Review: The Wrath & The Dawn by Renee Ahdieh

Title: The Wrath & the Dawn
Author: Renee Ahdieh
Source/Format: Borrowed from the Library; Hardcover
More Details: Young Adult; Fantasy
Publisher/Publication Date: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers; May 12, 2015
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Synopsis from Goodreads...

One Life to One Dawn...

In a land ruled by a murderous boy-king, each dawn brings heartache to a new family. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, is a monster. Each night he takes a new bride only to have a silk cord wrapped around her throat come morning. When sixteen-year-old Shahrzad's dearest friend falls victim to Khalid, Shahrzad vows vengeance and volunteers to be his next bride. Shahrzad is determined not only to stay alive, but to end the caliph's reign of terror once and for all. Night after night, Shahrzad beguiles Khalid, weaving stories that enchant, ensuring her survival, though she knows each dawn could be her last. But something she never expected begins to happen: Khalid is nothing like what she'd imagined him to be. This monster is a boy with a tormented heart. Incredibly, Shahrzad finds herself falling in love. How is this possible? It's an unforgivable betrayal. Still, Shahrzad has come to understand all is not as it seems in this palace of marble and stone. She resolves to uncover whatever secrets lurk and, despite her love, be ready to take Khalid's life as retribution for the many lives he's stolen. Can their love survive this world of stories and secrets?

Inspired by A Thousand and One Nights, The Wrath and the Dawn is a sumptuous and enthralling read from beginning to end...

Lately, I’ve had a string of books that I was really looking forward to, but they just ended up being okay for me. The same can be said about The Wrath & The Dawn by Renee Ahdieh. There was nothing particularly bad about the story I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. 

After reading The Star-Touched Queen I was like “yes, give me more fantasy books that don’t clearly have medieval-like themes.” So, of course I was kind of excited to see what Ahdieh could do with a story like A Thousand and One Nights. I wanted to know what kinds of twists there would be, and how Shahrzad would be portrayed.

Hmm. I read this book relatively quickly, but had to take a couple of days before I decided on what rating I wanted to put up on even Goodreads. Like I stated above, The Wrath & The Dawn wasn’t a bad story. There were some things that I genuinely liked about the book, especially the stories that Shahrzad told to Khalid and Ahdieh’s writing. However, I felt like there was something missing from the whole reading experience. My main problem with this one was that as I was reading the story, I didn’t feel much. I didn’t have much of an emotional response to the story or the situations the characters happened to be in outside of a few scenes. That’s what made writing this kind of hard. Now that I’ve gone back and looked at the synopsis while setting up this blog post, I’ve kind of realized that it tells a lot about the actual story. I just wish that it didn’t do that, because as these things were actually happening in the book, I was already kind of unconsciously expecting them.

Okay, with that out of the way, I’m going to talk about some of the others things I liked. It mainly included the setting and a few of the side characters. The descriptions of the scenery were pretty close to amazing. While much of the story revolved around Shahrzad, the parts where more of the society outside of royal life was shown were some of my favorite scenes. Now, there were a handful of side characters that kind of made the story. At times, I was more interested in what they were doing instead of Shahrzad.

So, I don’t know. I might read the last book in this duology, but I don’t really know when that’ll actually happen.

Music Monday (18) Victoria Monet & FKJ

   Rules:

• Music Monday is a weekly meme hosted by Lauren Stoolfire at Always Me that asks you to share one or two songs that you've recently enjoyed. For the rules, visit the page HERE 

Breana: My picks this week are We Are People and Good Times X Trouble by Victoria Monet. This past Saturday I happened to be listening to google music when I heard Victoria Monet’s song, We Are People. I instantly loved it! Since then, I’ve listened to her Nightmares & Lullaby EP’s, Act 1 & 2. I found it kind of hard to narrow down which two songs I wanted to mention for Music Monday, because those EP’s are gold. Eventually, I decided on We Are People and Good Times X Trouble because they are truly lovely songs.

First up is We Are People. I’ve listened to this song more than a dozen times by now. I love everything about it.

Good Times X Trouble is the second song I listened to after I stopped playing We Are People on repeat. This is another good one, but really, I recommend giving both EP’s a listen. There are other great songs worth mentioning like Backyard, Cupid, and Mad Generation.

Adri: This week I've been lovin' Skyline by FKJ (If you look under the youtube about page for FKJ it stands for French Kiwi Juice). I had no words when I first heard the song. I just don't know, it's hard to describe. I just love it.

Recently, have you  discovered any new musicians? If so, leave your recommendations in the comments down below.

Weekend Tidbits {#10} So Much Stuff

Today, I have so much stuff to go over, hence the title of the post. It seemed only fitting since most of what I’m going to mention today is not specifically book related, and wouldn’t be a fit for Musing Monday.

Recently there has been a handful of trailer releases that have gotten me really excited for the sequels I’ve been waiting years for, which got me thinking about some of the other movies I’m waiting for.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Let me just start this off by saying: Baby Groot!!! Obviously, I’m really looking forward to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. It’s been a couple of years since Guardians of the Galaxy came out, and it’s still my favorite Marvel movie. After the end of the first movie, I really want to see where the story goes.

Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tale: It has been six years—SIX YEARS—since the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie. That’s a long time to wait, but from the look of the trailer, all that time seems to be worth it. This also appears to be the return of Will Turner and the Flying Dutchman, which is a decision I can totally get behind. I’m beyond excited for Dead Men Tell No Tales. I'm not going to lie, when I saw the “final adventure” part from the trailer, I was worried that this was going to be the last movie in the franchise. Thankfully, it isn’t. P.S. I still miss Tia Dalma. She will forever be my favorite character from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Wonder Woman & Justice League: I’m kind of curious to see how these movies turn out. Marvel is great, but I also like some of the stuff from DC too. My hopes are really high for Wonder Woman. Just from the trailers, it looks like it’s going to put some context to the picture of Wonder Woman from Batman V Superman. Then there’s Justice League, which is going to have The Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman! I’m really looking forward to seeing those three characters as more than just cameo appearances.

Recently, I picked up two of the new Beauty and the Beast Funko Pops. I got Cogsworth and Mrs. Pots with Chip. I have to admit that these are probably three of my favorite funkos mainly because of the design of the characters. The colors are incredibly nice, and Cogswoth’s whole design is just awesome.

And last, but certainly not least, I have a recipe I want to share. This is one of my favorites. I’ve made it multiple ways, and can confirm that it turns out great each and every time. Do you need a recipe for flaky biscuits, you know, the ones with all those layers? I have found my go-to recipe:

Dessert Now Dinner Later Foolproof Flaky Biscuits 

I use this one whenever I make biscuits, and I’ve made it a number of ways. I’ve used regular milk, almond milk, wheat flour, or a combination of wheat & unbleached, or wheat & all-purpose. It just works great. The ones pictured below were made with half whole wheat & half all-purpose flour, and buttermilk.

Our Thoughts Precisely Is Now 4 Years Old

Gosh, I feel like I never have anything planned for this day, but this year, I actually did forget that March 15th is the anniversary of when Andrea and I started Our Thoughts Precisely. This blog is officially 4 years old. 4 years old. Guys, that’s a pretty long time, and it seems like it was just yesterday when we were only posting stuff to goodreads. Since then, Adri has joined us, which reminds me that I need to go around to all the little corners of the blog and update some of the pages. I will probably do that sometime soon. Maybe next year I will finally remember to do something more on March 15th, but I digress. I won’t repeat the entire history of the blog because that would just be needlessly repetitive. However, I just wanted to quickly drop this post here to acknowledge the day, and say a very big thank you to everyone who has stopped by the blog, followed us, left comments, or just read any of our posts. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much for sticking around!

Review: Ghostly Echoes by William Ritter

Title: Ghostly Echoes
Author: William Ritter
Source/Format: Won; Hardcover
More Details: Young Adult; Historical; Fantasy
Publisher/Publication Date: Algonquin Young Readers; August 23, 2016

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

Jenny Cavanaugh, the ghostly lady of 926 Augur Lane, has enlisted the investigative services of her fellow residents to solve a decade-old murder—her own. Abigail Rook and her eccentric employer, Detective R. F. Jackaby, dive into the cold case, starting with a search for Jenny’s fiancé, who went missing the night she died. But when a new, gruesome murder closely mirrors the events of ten years prior, Abigail and Jackaby realize that Jenny’s case isn’t so cold after all, and her killer may be far more dangerous than they suspected.

Fantasy and folklore mix with mad science as Abigail’s race to unravel the mystery leads her across the cold cobblestones of nineteenth-century New England, down to the mythical underworld, and deep into her colleagues’ grim histories to battle the most deadly foe she has ever faced...

This is another one of those books that I really had to stop and think about what I’d read before trying to write out the review. Except, this time it took me a lot longer than usual to finally get back to Ghostly Echoes. I read Ghostly Echoes back in early February, and I've just now gotten around to talking about it on the blog. I don't normally start with the third book in a series. However, I already had this book on my shelf, and I wanted to see if this was a series I would be interested in continuing before getting the other books. Honestly, there were some things about the story that I have some mixed feelings about, but the mystery and paranormal elements were actually pretty interesting.

Going into this book, I didn’t know much about the series or Ghostly Echoes. But, the idea of a ghost playing a part in trying to solve her own cold case murder was enough of an incentive to get me to read this book. This sounded like the kind of mystery I would actually enjoy reading. If I think about Ghostly Echoes as a whole, it wasn’t bad at all. And that mystery I was so interested in was the focus of the story. While the mystery was one of the more important aspects of the book, there were also others scenes that illustrated the relationship dynamics between the characters. I particularly liked those more personal scenes.

Since I got such a late start in the series I didn’t know much about the history of the characters. However, there was enough dialogue and bits and pieces of experiences recounted by the characters that I didn’t have any trouble getting into the story. The characters were okay. Jackaby was fine, but I don’t have much to say about him other than the fact that he had a very interesting ability. Abigail’s role in the story was, just like Jackaby’s, fine. I didn’t mind reading from her perspective.

Now, there is one more thing I want to make mention of before I end this review, and that’s the villains. You can’t have a good mystery without good villains to be in that antagonistic role. And Ghostly Echoes had villains that were cunning, ruthless, and coldhearted—which is what made the mystery so good.

So, Ghostly Echoes was a pretty good book. Now that I’ve read it, I would be interested in eventually going back and reading the rest of the series.