I enjoyed this overall! I love a good Middle Eastern inspired fantasy and this one didn't disappoint in that regard. I think this could have been a really fantastic duology, a la Renee Ahdieh, and characters could have been fleshed out a little more but it's still a solid read for a standalone. What kept this from being a 5 star read for me was that while it was dark and twisty, the emphasis was more on the twisty than the dark. I wanted more out of Soraya as an anti-heroine and at times found myself just plain rooting for her to just become a villain.

By the end, I also found myself getting annoyed by the constant use of some variation of the phrase "as if they could read my mind" or "somehow I just knew. . ." It was one of those things that once I noticed it, it seemed like I was seeing it constantly.