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Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands, #1)

Alwyn Hamilton

Start date: March 1, 2017

Finish date: March 31, 2017

Discussion: Book of the Month

Why we're reading this: Voted as our "Most Popular Books Published in February 2017" March BOM…more
[close] Voted as our "Most Popular Books Published in February 2017" March BOM

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* BOM: Group Read History [2025]
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last updated Sep 27, 2025 10:28PM

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What Members Thought

Oct 01, 2015 cc rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook, netgalley, 2016-published, debut, debut-author-challenge-2016, 2016-read

This one started out strong for me, I took an immediate liking to the heroine, Amani, who in the very first scene is disguised as a boy to enter a men’s shooting competition and it's glorious.

I also enjoyed the fast-paced roller coaster of events that ends up forcing Amani and Jin to travel together--strangers on a journey is right up my alley and frankly the main reason I wanted to read this book. There’s an army after them, not to mention the plethora of scary desert creatures, but Amani and J This one started out strong for me, I took an immediate liking to the heroine, Amani, who in the very first scene is disguised as a boy to enter a men’s shooting competition and it's glorious.

I also enjoyed the fast-paced roller coaster of events that ends up forcing Amani and Jin to travel together--strangers on a journey is right up my alley and frankly the main reason I wanted to read this book. There’s an army after them, not to mention the plethora of scary desert creatures, but Amani and Jin seem to have a talent to survive everything the desert throws at them. This goes on for a while, to the point that it slowly became the reason I started to lose interest in the story.

The thing is, Amani and Jin spend pretty much half of the book running from all these people and things chasing them, which doesn’t leave much room for character development and to actually get to know them as individuals, but then there comes a time when they can finally stop running and rest for a while and I thought, “yes! now give me character growth!”, but at that point there's a bunch of new characters being introduced, also a new setting, new information, new plans, plot twists, and again, no time to really focus on Amani and Jin, and that’s when I realized I just didn’t care about this book anymore. Honestly, I’m down with adventure and action scenes and new characters any time, but if I don’t really know the hero and the heroine then I can’t be bothered to care about anything else, regardless of how fantastic it may be, and that’s when I lose all interest in a book.

All I can say about the romance is that it felt way too forced because even though I enjoyed the easy friendship Amani and Jin had going on, they had little to none chemistry when it came to romance. Those. Kissing. Scenes. So. Awkward.

In conclusion, I don’t think this is a bad book, it just didn’t work for me.

(I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)
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9 likes · Like · see review

Jun 24, 2024 Wealie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 0-series-read, 0-audible, 0-kindle, 0-purchased, 1st-of-series, listened, challenge-read, mng-read, read-in-2024

3.75 stars -A good start to a story, with a strong protagonist. A little slow to start, but builds into a great plot with excellent world building. Will be reading on in this series

1 like · Like · see review