sleepyowl_ink reviewed The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury
Review of 'The Forbidden Wish' on 'LibraryThing'
2 stars
I guess I'm one of the minority that didn't like the book. Which is a shame because the premise was interesting.
I couldn't connect with the characters or their supposed struggles. All the characters felt a bit flat, especially Aladdin, who's either drunk or standing around doing nothing in most scenes. I understand the author is trying to write strong female characters, but they need to remember the other characters who are also in the scene.
The handmaidens were all flat stereotypes, you have the quiet, bookish one (sorry, I forget their names), the suspicious one, the one with the snake (I know that's not a stereotype, but I mean that they have only one feature differentiating them) etc. and they are all joined in their unshakeable loyalty to the Princess. You get a little bit of backstory with the one who's royalty in a different country, but nothing more …
I guess I'm one of the minority that didn't like the book. Which is a shame because the premise was interesting.
I couldn't connect with the characters or their supposed struggles. All the characters felt a bit flat, especially Aladdin, who's either drunk or standing around doing nothing in most scenes. I understand the author is trying to write strong female characters, but they need to remember the other characters who are also in the scene.
The handmaidens were all flat stereotypes, you have the quiet, bookish one (sorry, I forget their names), the suspicious one, the one with the snake (I know that's not a stereotype, but I mean that they have only one feature differentiating them) etc. and they are all joined in their unshakeable loyalty to the Princess. You get a little bit of backstory with the one who's royalty in a different country, but nothing more than a paragraph.
The love story was dull, I couldn't understand their attraction to each other and the token scenes (eg. stealing the pipe) dedicated to their budding relationship was too obvious and contrived.
It felt like this book glossed over too much. Perhaps if it was a longer book, with more room to deal with the relationships between the characters, more exploration of their desires, I would have found this book more interesting.
