Honestly I’m not entirely certain why I picked The Tyrant’s
Daughter off of the NetGalley website because it’s not a genre that I typically
choose. I’m usually drawn primarily to fantasy, historical fiction, or mystery
and I would not consider The Tyrant’s Daughter to be any of the above. Instead it
was a very realistic examination of how a teenage girl named Laila deals with
some very big changes in her life.
When the story begins Laila and her family, exiles from an
unnamed Muslim country, are getting used to their recent move to the United
States. Soon enough Laila, who grew up believing her father to be a King soon
learns that others called him by much worse names such as tyrant, dictator and
that he was the reason why hundreds were killed back in her home country. So
not only does she have to deal with learning a very different, very unfamiliar
culture she is also worried about what she’s learning about her father and as
to why her mother keeps alternating between meeting with CIA agents and meeting
with rebels who would have violently opposed her father’s rule.
What I really liked was the emotional growth that Laila went
through during the course of the novel. It was interesting because it was so
realistic, meaning that at the very base of things she had thoughts that would
be very common for teenagers everywhere but she also had the views associated
with being a fish out of water, a girl trying to fit into a country that was
not her own. She was a relatable and very fleshed out character as were most of
her friends and family members.
I especially liked how throughout the novel she wavered as
to what she truly wanted to embrace, her Muslim values and upbringing or her
chance at a different life in America, and at the end she made the best of both
choices by taking matters into her hands. So although I wasn’t as interested in
this as I have been in other books I’m still glad I took the chance to read it.
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