„As the poets say, stories are truths told through lies.“

5 gloriously shining stars. 1001 nights came alive before my eyes and I loved every second of it.

Reviewing a good book is hard. Mocking those you didn´t like is far less difficile than finding the right words to describe the brilliance you found in a book.
Reviewing The Forbidden Wish is indefinitely harder.

This book is an artist´s masterpiece, a flash of light and shine and brightness. It´s a firework of words, glimmering streams of beauty and imagination flowing together into the powerful tale of a journey of finding your purpose, the value of emotion and yourself.

It´s a thousand and one way to capture you and let you bask in the strength and striking appearance of not only a beautifully composed world, but a heroine worth every moment you spend with her as well.

TFW convinces with a writing that´s stunningly poetic, yet refrains from loosing itself in the depth of detail and still manages to weave a richly imagined, vivid and inwardly glowing story. It thrills in a subtle way, never bouncing right in the reader´s face with cheap action and mainstream entertainment, but with a constant current of excitement. At the same time it scatters fine shards of humor, sometimes sharp, sometimes sweet.

I actually have to narrow down my thoughts on that one.
The most enticing thing probably is the choice of PoV. It´s a new, fresh way to tell a story of 1001 nights. Instead of going on a journey with a princess or the thief we join the jinni on her way to regain her heart and her life.
It´s different and absolutely captivating to see those well known characters from a stranger´s view and it was nice to lay the focus on them from a neutral position.
Zhara is a lovable heroine whose choices can easily be excused due to her long life, knowledge and past. While others may have come across as naive and annoying for hiding the truths they know and therefore conjuring certain doom, her silence is utterly understandable and strangely endearing. Her strength and compassion is impressive and her ways are interesting.

The tale itself never once got boring, but kept a steady flow of events upright, turning them into different directions. Excitement followed romance to be chased away by laughing. It spun itself so tightly around itself, letting go of it would´ve been a lost cost. There´s no lapse in logic and the story swirled through deserts, dunes, dark streets and palace walls to climax in a fight of selflessness and selfishness, for the wishes of a desiring heart. In its wake it left an applauding me, for I actually had to pause in awe at times.

The whole cast of characters fits as neatly as a bride´s hair on her wedding day. Those who only crossed paths with Zhara filled the room they took just as perfectly as the permanent ones. The character development is done just as astonishingly well as the world building, so living with them for this far too short span of time was a pleasure. Or not, depending on who we´re talking about.

There are 1001 things more to say about this book, but I´ll settle for a simple wow.