Themis-Athena's Garden of Books

Task: Find a redeeming quality in a book you read this year and didn’t like.

I've never understood the rave reviews that this book is getting, but then, I'm not its target audience; and I suppose if you read it as a straight-up YA fantasy, you might find it OK.  My problem with it consisted in the fact that Ahdieh had actually written it as historical fiction with a few minor fantasy elements -- or at least, that's the way it very much came across to me -- without actually having bothered to do the required research, and thus it came up straight against one of my absolute pet peeves.  But if you don't think historical accuracy and the meaning of the words you are using actually matters, or if you think that YA readers deserve less respect and attention than other readers, I guess you might end up liking this book.