I am just reminded of why I stopped reading :)
hey it's Divya G. What does the G stand for? The G stands for goodreads book
reviews full of fangirl keyboard smashing and gifs told me to read this book. Back in
my youth this channel used to be called Divya Reads. *laughs at the audacity* Yes. But yeah I stopped
reading so I had to keep up with my own branding on my own channel so that's now
been fossilized and put in the Museum of Historical Events.... until I read these two
We went on a few dates, you know, we started to get to know each other - we're
getting a little bit cozy, you know?, we're trying to let our relationship bloom [buy the album]
until they started to revealed their true colors. It's kind of like when you
start off at a new school and everyone pretends to be all nice to you all rosy
dosy and then you know two weeks later they reveal the true colors. I mean it's
like "oh you're not who I thought you were". So if you look on Goodreads and you
look at this book you'll see that this has Rave Reviews but I don't rave - I rant.
So subscribe if you want to be updated for the next time that I read a book :)
The things that I'm gonna say in this video obviously it's my own opinion and all I
ask is for a little you know R E S P E C T. Respect. Just a little bit. You don't
have to listen to anything that comes out of my mouth because at the end of
the day Who am I? Let's start off with the premise okay this is Renee's debut novel
it's set in the Middle East in a Persian city it's a Thousand and One Nights tale
retelling. It's set in a city of mistrust and tragedy especially with regards to
the Caliph of Khorasan and Khalid (!!!!) who is 18 and he marries a new wife every day and
kills them at dawn. ooh. Shahrzad who has
volunteered as tribute to be (now isn't that a throwback) to be the new wife of
Khalid because her best friend was the previous wife and yes she dead.... and she
wants revenge and to find out "boy why are you killing all these women?!" you know
I want some *fist smashing* now she's alive and the way that she manages to stay alive for a few
nights is by telling him a story and she leaves a story on a cliffhanger so
Khalid is like "wait... but I need to find out what happens next!!" I won't kill you.
Tomorrow instead. But this is a YA fantasy romance so we all know that
Khalid isn't just killing all these females for no senseless random reason
right there's like a backstory or something and his actions are somehow
justified. sfsdfsdfsfdsdf so that's the premise now the tea. First of all, I'm very appreciative of
the fact that it's actually set in the Middle East okay it's not set in the
West and the author herself comes from a culturally mixed background and I really
rate the fact that the characters in here are brown. Diversity points? Ticktick
but diversity alone is not enough to pull the whole novel all the way through
okay a lot of people describe her writing as sort of purple prose which
means is basically like flowery and extravagant and in the first book I
actually kind of rated her writing I like the way that she describes things
and especially food oh boy. the way she describes the food. *she pauses* but also you do get
phrases like "he smells of sunlight"??????????????? "her hazel orbs flashed like the back of
my iPhone camera" but I did actually enjoy the reading process what I really
appreciate is Renee's attempts to bring about female empowerment in not
just through the main character but also through more subdued ways in you know
Isra's character you know you don't have to be all like out there to be strong
independent female by yourself and what I liked about Shazi's character -
especially in the beginning, is this sort of juxtaposing conflict between her
internal dialogue which is, you know, a little bit scared a little bit
vulnerable versus this like steely exterior that she presents to other people. And
then in the second book every sentence was unnecessarily dramatized to the
point where everything that I read felt like it could occupy his own paragraph
this sentence would be something like "he was a shell of what he was - a shadow of
what he could be" Like girl you're a shell in
yourself like I don't understand what happened between the first book and the
second book. This series morphed into another YA series where you know the
independent strong "I kick and kill men" women falls in love with her psychotic
kidnapper, Dench, hench muscley man who you know is a tragic figure and he has a
soft side too and you know, "I understand that he killed my best friend and you
know hundreds of other woman but it's okay because you know there's a reason
behind it all and he has nice rippling muscles too which I can see underneath
his white shirt whenever he moves" like
yeah I'm not here for this. So the rose and the dagger suffered from an
incredibly slow plot where absolutely NOTHING HAPPENED FOR A big-ass chunk of the book and suddenly in the last 20
pages you know countless people died for absolutely no plot driven reason that
I ended up not even caring about because I ended up not caring about any of the
characters anyway and then a war was resolved and then war meetings happened
and then someone came back to life and then we flash forward ten years into the
future and a battle happened and then I lost the will to live. The biggest issue
that I have with this whole series as a whole you know apart from all the
characters who have daddy issues <3 Sigmund Freud get on that was... can I even call
it that.... romance? My favourite shape of all time made an appearance in this series
the love triangle <3
well the author really tries to get to root for this like love between Khalid
and Shazi and I don't know if this girl suffers from short-term memory loss or
something she suddenly starts to somehow fall in love with the murder of her best
friend in the space of like three days and I'm just here like is this Sky
broadband because where was the connection? because like one minute she
hates his bones and then the next minute she wants to jump on them :D On a more
serious note there were also scenes which I don't know if it was intentional or if
this is how it was supposed to come across but to me they seemed almost like
not non-consensual but very forced and uncomfortable and I just
don't like the way that situation was handled. YA in general has this weird
infatuation and likes to romanticize this love where it's so intense and
dramatic that you are willing to like die and you're willing to murder and
you're willing to sacrifice everything for one person and in my opinion that is
not romantic I mean if I had a partner and they were telling me that they were
so jealous to the point where they want to kill my friend just so they could be
with me and they would set ablaze to an entire city
errrrr is that the time I'm running in the other direction and I'm calling the
police if love makes people blind Shazi doesn't
even have eyes. Moral of the story: what did I learn from reading this duology?
Firstly that our main character is very pretty like very pretty she's ve- secondly I
learned that your family means absolutely nothing and so does you know
the entire civilization anyone else especially when you're sixteen years old
and in love with your three-month-old husband and thirdly I learned that I
really can't read another YA book like this. uh two out of ten would
recommend two out of ten is a bit harsh isn't it it's not that bad I give it
maybe two point five out of ten. Don't let my opinion sway you or stop you from
reading this book if you want. I would have gone into a more in-depth spoiler
review but honestly I'm just trying to erase this from my memory. I thank you
for watching my very incoherent rant like comment and subscribe to your
do be do things and if you did read this book tell me we thought about because...........
I was really angry about to make a rant book review but Troye Sivan's Dance To This
with Ariana Grande music video is out right now and um I got a pause one second