The Rose and the Dagger

by Renee Adieh

Rating: 5 stars

Wow, these books are so good! Although I didn’t like this one quite as much as The Wrath and the Dawn, it was still amazing!

(Warning, this has some spoilers.)

I love the characters in these, all of them are so well developed. After reading the first one, it was mostly Khalid and Tariq that stood out, but I think that was mostly because I was so worried they were going to kill each other. The other characters are absolutely amazing as well, obviously there were some that I don’t like very much, but they were still well developed. I quite liked Jalal, in the first book I found him a bit arrogant (Okay, he’s arrogant in this one too), but I found him a lot more likeable now.

I also really liked Rahim (Was that even his name? I can’t keep the names straight. Tariq’s friend.) he was funny, and I was not pleased when they killed him. I realize they probably had to kill somebody to make things realistic, but still, did it have to be him? Why couldn’t it have been someone else instead? Like… Um… Uh… I like all the characters too much, I didn’t want any of them to die (well obviously I don’t want them to die, but there’s normally someone who I wouldn’t have minded too much if they’d died).

I also liked Shazi (whose full name I can’t spell, so she’s just going to be Shazi). I have this thing about main characters. I rarely like them. I don’t dislike them. I just normally feel sort of “meh” about them, so when I find one I actually like, I’m very pleased. And I like Shazi, she’s funny, she’s tough, she cares about her friends and family, I can totally relate to her despite having almost nothing in common with her. I think all of those are signs of a good character. Honestly I don’t think ‘like’ is a strong enough word, I love Shazi, she’s a wonderful character to read about!

There’s more characters I love too, but it would take me ages to talk about all of them, so… I’ll stop now. And talk about other things. Like the plot. It was so exciting. I could not put it down! Well, I did, but only for basic necessities. Like food. And sleep. Honestly I wouldn’t have even stopped for sleep, but I’d slept for about five hours previous night, and wanted to actually understand what I was reading, so since I was far too sleepy to do so I made myself put it down. About an hour later than I said I would. Oops.

Also the writing was really good. The writing doesn’t usually stand out to me as much, but I just really loved the writing in these books.

So, although I didn’t like it quite as much as the first one, it’s definitely worth reading, and I loved it!