The Fire Wish by Amber Lough - ESSENTIAL

Lough, Amber.  The Fire Wish.  Random House, 2014.  307 pages.  $17.99.  Violence: PG.  Language: G (two swears).  Violence: PG.  Sexual Content: G. 

Zayele is only 15-year-old when she is chosen by the vizier to be a princess and married to the son of the caliph.  Zayele and her cousin are put in a barge and not allowed outside for the entire trip to palace.  She is desperate and looking for anyway to escape…and then a jinni who looks just like her appears outside her window.  She catches the jinni and wishes that the jinni will take her place and send her home.  Zayele isn’t sent home but to the underground cavern where all the jinni live.  Everyone there thinks she is Najwa (the jinni), including Attish, a very handsome jinni warrior.  Her uncle asks her to perform an important task and Zayele tries to escape the cavern.

Meanwhile Najwa fears for her life because the humans and jinni have been fighting for fifteen years.  She tries to escape Zayele’s wish but cannot so she has to take her place as the princess.  Najwa has been in the palace once before when she took a rose from the harem’s garden.  Najwa was the only jinni who could get into the palace and she was supposed to spy to help the jinni in the war.  The marriage is postponed because the caliph is ill, but Najwa meets the prince and falls in love.  What will he say when he finds out who and what she really is?

Author Amber Lough has created a fascinating foreign world of magic and mystery with two superb romances.  The plot is well crafted with small clues helping the reader piece the past and present together.   A wonderful read that you won’t be able to put down.  Highly recommended for all libraries. 

MS/HS: ESSENTIAL.  Samantha Hastings, MA, MLS.