Mirage by Somaiya Daud

GoodReads Summary:
In a star system dominated by the brutal Vathek empire, eighteen-year-old Amani is a dreamer. She dreams of what life was like before the occupation; she dreams of writing poetry like the old-world poems she adores; she dreams of receiving a sign from Dihya that one day, she, too, will have adventure, and travel beyond her isolated moon.
But when adventure comes for Amani, it is not what she expects: she is kidnapped by the regime and taken in secret to the royal palace, where she discovers that she is nearly identical to the cruel half-Vathek Princess Maram. The princess is so hated by her conquered people that she requires a body double, someone to appear in public as Maram, ready to die in her place.
As Amani is forced into her new role, she can’t help but enjoy the palace’s beauty—and her time with the princess’ fiancé, Idris. But the glitter of the royal court belies a world of violence and fear. If Amani ever wishes to see her family again, she must play the princess to perfection…because one wrong move could lead to her death.
Review:
Mirage is a book that I let sit on my bookshelf for entirely too long. I absolutely loved this story. The book follows Amani as she is taken from her home and brought to the royal palace because she looks just like the Princess. Maram is not a very popular princess, so Amani is trained to behave exactly like Maram would and to know everything that Maram knows. It was hard not to feel bad for Amani. She’s been taken from the only life she’s known and thrown into the vicious world of the Vathek. The longer she’s with Princess Maram though, the better she gets to know her. I ended up feeling bad for Maram too. She’s only half-Vathek, so her struggle is that her mother’s people hate her because she’s Vathek and the Vathek people think less of her for her other half. I love Maram because we got to see growth. Though the ending sort of messed that up, but I’m very excited to see what will happen with her in the next book. Amani is thrown into a world where she’s mostly over her head. But she manages to make friends with some of the people in Maram’s life that Amani’s supposed to be fooling. I really liked when Amani visited Maram’s grandmother. That’s really when the story started to get really good. I mean, it was enjoyable the whole time, but the pace of the story really sped up around here.
Overall, I adored this book. It was a diverse story and the only thing that would make it better would be for Maram and Amani to fall in love. I loved the world, but I’m hoping we get to see more of it. There was also a romance and I totally wasn’t as invested in it as I thought I’d be. They were alright together, but I knew it wouldn’t end well as soon as it started. Anyway, definitely go read this book it was great.

Quotes:

“You are lucky”, she said. “Me?” “You know where you belong. You have your family and your traditions, no one is…is screaming at you to be something else.”

“When night falls, come and visit me, For I have seen night keeps secrets best.”

“A cage is a cage even if gilded.”

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.