actual rating 3.5 
 In this retelling of 1001 Nights, Kahlid takes a new wife every night and kills her at dawn. When Shazi's best friend is picked and killed, she volunteers to be a bride and goes in with a plan to kill the Kahlid. Things don't quite go to plan and that's the story we follow. 
 (I finished this book a month ago and am kicking myself for just now getting around to writing this review.) 
 I like retellings and diversity in our books so I'm really liked this book. I listened to this on audiobook and I found the descriptions and writing to be beautiful and really intriguing. However I have heard that some people who read the physical book were frustrated by some of the writing style choices (specifically Between Chapters on youtube and Liam here on booklikes mentioned this). 
 Here's the thing, for a good chunk of this book I felt pretty on the fence about this book. 
 Let's break this down a bit 
 -I loved the writing 
 -I loved the setting 
 -I was really sucked into the story 
 -I liked the hints of magic but was a bit frustrated by the way it was introduced 
 -I liked the all the characters 
 -I ended up loving the female friendship in this book 
 -I ended up really pulling for the love story 
 -I liked that someone was really pulling to kill of the "boy king" 
 Things I didn't love 
 -Shazi, while being stubborn in some areas, has like no willpower which leads us to 
 -The romance feels rather instaloveish 
 -I hated the love triangle 
 -The story progression for me was a bit slow and then 
 -The end felt really rushed 
 Yes I liked this book, and I'm going to pick up the sequel but I picked this up after two books I really didn't like and really weren't good and I wonder how much that impacted my rating (when going to write this I bumped this from an initial rating of 4.5 to a 3.5). Also this has been a year with a lot of rereads for me but I don't think I'm going reread this probably ever. It's good, I can see why people like it especially in a vast sea of pretty pale white girls who don't understand why a boy would like them having a strong diverse character who is powerful on her own in a well written world is appealing but that can't fix all the problems in this book.