Monday, April 6, 2020

Book Review: The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury (The Forbidden Wish #1)


The forbidden wish - kayxxkayx - Wattpad

When it comes to reading fairy and folk tale retellings, I’m going to be blatantly honest: I really haven’t read any so far, unless you perhaps count Witches Abroad by Terry Prachett. I absolutely consume them in series and movie forms, though. I’m a Once Upon A Time fan, and films like Into The Woods and even Snow White and the Huntsman really speak to me.

Enter The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury. This book is a retelling of the classic tale of Aladdin from the Book of One Thousand and One Nights. I was given this book for free and decided to give it a read! So let’s see how it fares. Spoilers ahead!


This book is told from the point of view of Zahra, who is the jinni of the lamp. It starts out with her meeting Aladdin. They pretty much go through the folktale, but with some things changed. Zahra slowly starts to fall more and more for Aladdin, which is forbidden. Zahra is given a choice: will she win her own freedom, or will she stay true to her heart and stay with Aladdin?

The Forbidden Wish probably isn’t for me. I’m just going to preface this by saying that I’m not a romance-reading type. I do read books that have it, but I’ve yet to read one where it is one of the absolute main focuses of it. Until this one. And I didn’t particularly enjoy it.

While I do think Zahra is a well-rounded character, I just for the life of me couldn’t get into this story’s interpretation of Aladdin. He just left no impact, so I really didn’t see what our main character saw in him, to the point of even being willing to give up her freedom for him. It’s also kind of iffy that Zahra is hundreds if not thousands of years old, yet Aladdin is continually referred to as “a boy” in the book, giving us the impression that he’s really young. That just really rubbed me the wrong way. I just didn’t buy the romance, which is one of the main aspects, if not the actual main theme, of this book. And that is a flaw.

There were some things I really liked, though. First of all, the way of writing was really easy to get into. I could just sit down and completely get lost in this book pretty much instantly, and it was a quick read because of that. It just felt very accessible.

I also quite liked the pacing. Like with the writing style, it was quick, yet not too fast, either.

Finally, I do absolutely like some of the things the story updated from the original folktale. First of all, the jinni being female was a positive change. The original story has little to no female characters safe for the princess, who is also very passive. Speaking of her, the princess also is a really active player in this story, and in the end she ends up getting the throne for herself, which was just really great to see. I appreciated a lot of the nods to the original story, such as the magical ring.

Overall, while it did have some positive elements to it, the romance just was too bothersome and blandly written for me to get into. If you love romance and you can look past it, I’m sure this is the book for you. However, for me it simply wasn’t. I’m giving The Forbidden Wish three out of five stars. If it works for you, great. Just not my thing. 

Rating: 3/5

No comments:

Post a Comment