Full review can also be found on: Paein and Ms4Tune's Book Blog 
 This book started with "I sense the boy the moment he sets foot in the cave." and I thought 'oh no, I'm going to have to translate every crosses to crossed and sits to sat in my mind!" which I tend to do with books written this way after a while - it happens sort of automatically, I'm not a fan of telling it as it happens books, I'm not sure why. But further down the page you discover that she's talking as if narrating the events to an old friend and somehow that transformed it from annoying to fantastic and actually kind of heart breakingly beautiful. 
 Another thing I thought might bother me was that it was changing the HEA of the Aladdin fairytale and I like my retelling's to still have the same basic structure! It's because of this I delayed buying this book - all of 22 days...but it all worked out in a way I enjoyed so that's a bonus. Though I did feel that the ending was a little dragged out - perhaps because it was way past my bedtime and I was trying to cram it all in? Maybe so... 
 I actually ended up loving the Jinni's back story, it was just epic and semi tragic enough to please me and give me something to respect her for, which is often missing in these types of story. I think that she's my second favourite character. Her old friend has a special place in my heart though we know so little about her. She seemed pretty fantastic. I also liked the princess and wish that we'd learnt more of her too. I found Aladdin a bit washy - possibly because Zahra had a lot going on in her head and we only saw of him what she paid attention to. I'm thinking the uncle and cousin were the Jafar equivalent and while one may have been salvageable, the other was way beyond it. I'd have liked to have seen more of his 'dark side' instead of just the throw away room search type explanation we had. 
 I loved when ever Zahra addressed her Habiba directly, just like in my quote above. That may have been my favourite part ever. Also, the end had some magic to it too - pun intended. In the end you really aught to be careful who you step on and oppress and which promises you find your way out of - just sayin'. 
 This was my first book by Jessica Khoury and I was pleasantly surprised. An Aladdin retelling worth the read.