One of those books I can't believe I finished, because it has so many things I detest, but once I did finish I saw the appeal.

A loose retelling of 1001 Arabian Nights, except with an annoying female protagonist who is SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. Did you read the description of how beautiful she is? Her hair, oh her hair. The jewels. The sparkles, THE OUTFITS! Throw some more adjectives.

She is also very certain of how special she is and so is everyone else. But, besides the pretty and a hot temper, that is about it. She's volunteers to be the next bride-sacrifice of the murderous Caliph who killed her best friend, along with many other young girls, because she's different and she's going to kill his ass, but of course he is also super beautiful. And despite the fact he rapes her (perfunctorily) the first and second night of her stay and doesn't kill her immediately at dawn like the others, she immediately starts to fall for him and have angry inner-dialogue about how she is still going to kill him, but never, ever does. He's so intriguing, strangers tell her to trust him, he has never actually slept with any of the other girls he's had killed (so romantic). He has SECRETS, so so what if she's kept waiting for him in a bedroom for the majority of the first half of the book? And then he stops sleeping with her when he realizes it means something (WHAT?)

Sigh.

However, despite all this annoyance, I was still entranced and really wanted to know how the story ended (with a terrible flippin' cliff hanger). Also, after getting over that first part I genuinely bought the chemistry between Shazi and Khalid, and the scenes between them are great in the latter half of the book.

Gah. So, basically a hate-read. Also the narrator for the audio book didn't really differentiate the voices of the different characters which is a huge annoyance, but did have a lovely voice.