A review by terrorbot
This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi

2.0

Beautiful cover, tedious book. This definitely felt like a Cinderella retelling, including a main character that likes to sew, a magic ballgown and slippers, a midnight deadline, animal (read also: bug) companions, and forbidden, insta-love. That, coupled with a penchant for lengthy internal dialogue, sporadic prophetic/mythological details, choppy character dialogue (what is it with everyone interrupting everyone?), and random plot pauses to build the setting, made this a hard one for me to get through. Alizeh spends most of the book friendless (still not convinced Miss Huda is a friend btw) and oscillates between being a mistreated maid (soft spoken, quiet) and the heir to the Jinn kingdom (speaking sharply, killing assassins). Prince Kamran is as immature as they come, treats his supposed friends terribly, and doesn't really seem to care about much. Side note: his mom is hella weird, who tries to repeatedly take their offspring off guard, flinging heavy objects and holding knives to their throats? Most of the relationships felt toxic or false. I think my favorite character was the firefly.

I’m bummed - I had super high hopes for this one!