Friday Reads: Mini reviews for The Star Touched Queen & The Forbidden Wish!!!

Hiya there guys!

While I'm sleeping the day away after working a double shift yesterday and working night shift again tonight, I'm gonna leave you with a pair of mini reviews for this week's Friday Reads!

Both books are 2016 releases, both highly awaited for me, and one of them even more because it was one of my top 3 MOST awaited debuts of the year! I'll be counting it towards my 2016 Debut Author Challenge!

The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


With a most wondrous & gorgeous prose and a wonderful story full of Hindu mythology and with a few winks to both Hades & Persephone (and maybe it's just me, but also a lil bit of Eros & Pysche myth), this one is the perfect debut to leave us wanting more! The story does end like a standalone, even if it also makes you want a lil bit more.

I could go on and on about the amazing writing and how it reminded me of the traditional myths and how they resonate very much in this story, but without the dryness that sometimes the more traditional storytelling they might have. You simply cannot stop turning pages to see what else will be coming, what else we'll find out about the past and the previous history of the characters.

The world was both wondrous and utterly dangerous and the secondary characters really added so much to the story, particularly a certain non-vegetarian horse! I couldn't get enough of her thoughts stream and her sense of humour!

I was quite surprised about the progression of the book, because I wasn't sure where the story was going or what turns it'd take, given the various myths that I feel woven into the story! Which made it even more fun to read, meeting new characters, seeing Maya discover who she was and who she is and who she wants to be, and what she wants her future to be!

Now, I will read whatever Roshani will write next, grocery list and all! Very much deserved 5 stars to this most highly awaited debut that didn't disappoint!



 The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Oh how I loved this retelling of the Aladdin story!! Aladdin has always been one of my fave Disney movies and I've always been a big fan of the tales from the 1001 Arabian Nights, so when I heard about a retelling with a gender swapped genie, I was all over it!

This was my first Jessica Khoury book and I'm very much in love with her writing and storytelling style! The story is told in first person POV and we are in Zahra's mind, which makes it easier to understand her doubts, her torn feelings and loyalties and made me really root for her!

Aladdin both the lovely rogue we know and also so much more! We are given some background about his family and the rebellion he is avoiding and we understand him so much better, even if we're never inside his head. I feel like multiple POV chapters between Zahra and Aladdin would have been a lot of fun to read too!

Between the personal relationships between characters, human politics and power plays and the threat and power plays between the Jinn too, the book was never boring! There's so much scheming and plotting and finding alliances! Zahra finds herself having to make some very tough choices! And to make everything even more interesting, we get Zahra's remembrances about the past and her human friend and sister like, her guilt about what happened and the fact that time has changed the history and the story of Zahra and her friend.

Wrapped so well but I feel like I still want more!! I'm not keen on saying goodbye to Zahra and Aladdin or Cas and her Watchmaidens...

Very much deserved 4 to 4.5 stars! I'm very much hoping Jessica Khoury will feel like writing a companion novel or two, because I so loved the world and the characters!

Saturday Pages: ALL THE SAMPLERS!!

Hello there guys!!

Yesterday I absolutely enjoyed my first opera experience, getting goosebumps and nearly crying at the end, Madama Butterfly was fantastic! Now the besties and me are planning to go see Rigoletto next when the company plays it in Feb/March!

Today for this week's Saturday Pages I have mini reviews for all the samplers that I recently got from Netgalley! I know a lot of you guys don't like samplers but I seem to have zero self control when it comes to books I want, and also samplers are very useful when I'm curious about a book by a new author, or for a book that I should be more excited about since it's an author I love...

A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab


This one was simply lack of self control... AGOS is one of my top 3 most awaited sequels for 2016 and the moment I saw this sampler available on NetGalley I knew I had to read it.

It's quite a big sampler, and I'm already itching to re-read it, so I won't have a problem with re-reading the beginning once the book comes out!

Although I was 100% before now I'm 1000% sure that I'll absolutely love this book!! Our beloved Lila Bard is being her badass self, and even more badass that ever before! I just had to adore her & her restlessness and her wish & fear to belong and settle down.

We see that change has come to Red London, Grey London and White London, and whatever we thought we knew about the Antari is being challenged very early on! Or maybe I'm just reading too much into certain details... Who knows!

We meet a few new characters, although we barely get to know them, although Alucard gets a bit of more page time, and he promises to be a very interesting character indeed! There seems to be a certain history that will come into play later on, and I cannot wait to find out more!

Really guys, if you haven't read ADSOM, go read it now and if you have... go preorder AGOS NOW! If you already have it preordered, as I do... rest assured, we're gonna love this one to pieces, I KNOW IT!!

The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury


Jessica Khoury has a few books out already but for some reason I haven't read anything by her yet, so when I saw the sampler for this one (fantasy! Aladdin retelling!) I decided to check it out and see if it could be my kinda thing.

And as it happens, it is! I really enjoyed both the descriptions and the writing and loved how it starts and feels familiar (if you've watched the movie) but also how different it is, and not only because the genie, jinn in this case (let's be proper) is a girl, but also because of how much history is behind the current story. How much regret and guilt the jinni carries with her.

We meet quite a few characters that could be familiar but that are also complete different and with a very different history and development, from Aladdin himself, to the princess, to the Jinni... And I cannot wait to see more of these characters, and of course to get more of the world building and of the history snippets that Zahra gives us here and there.

The sampler gave us only a small peek at the plotting that might come into play in the book, from Zahra's mission to gain her freedom to Aladdin's quest to do something important, and where both might clash at some point and what choices will Zahra make this time!

This sampler convinced me that I want to check this book, so much that I ended preordering it!

Riders by Veronica Rossi


This is sampler that I requested because this is a book that by all usual standards I ought to be super excited about! It's by Veronica Rossi and I adored her Under The Never Sky series, and the book is a reimagining about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, so really... it sounds like it'd be a Pili book! But for some strange reason I'm not that excited about it.

Reading the sampler I was a bit thrown off by how it starts in the middle of the action so to speak, and how our main character spends his time tied to a chair telling someone from the US government (and us of course) all that's been going on till that moment.

I don't usually mind that style of storytelling, but I'm not sure how I'd like if the whole book is gonna be told like that till the final part or something... At least all of the sampler is Gideon recounting what has happened. And although I want to find out more and meet the rest of the Horsemen and know what the hell happened to land Gideon in military custody... it feels like there's a lack of urgency since it's a recount of the past.

After reading this sampler I'm still unsure of this one, and will be awaiting reviews from my bloggy friends that got ARCs before deciding whether I get this one or pass it up.