Thank you so much to the publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to read this arc in exchange for an honest review! The Jasad Heir is a triumph, and I'm so happy that I could read this novel. Hashem takes readers on a journey with this political fantasy, with romantic elements. I loved the author's writing style, I believe that it shows great promise. Overall, I loved this novel, I can't wait to read more of Hashem's work.

Enemies to lovers and slow burn! Morally grey characters. Perfect combo as I love it!super curious there second book will take us

A fun Egyptian inspired story about an heir in hiding and political maneuvering. This books had a complex world building elements as well as political themes. This was at hard times to follow and the writing maybe could have been a bit tighter for me. The romance was fun and done well. Overall this was an enjoyable book. I think the setting was my favorite part!

The Jasad Heir is a powerful look at colonialism and the power dynamics that exist between the conqueror and the conquered.

I will start with saying I love royalty, rebellions, and actual enemies to lovers. This book obviously had all three. I expected to like it, not love it like I did. The plot was well executed with the pacing well done. The characters had depth and made you feel something. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to continue.

Enjoyed but not a favorite! The premise was cool and the world was different from other fantasies and fun. I'll probably continue the series but i'm not jumping to grab the next one.

It has been a while since i read this story, i read the physical copy and forgot to give my feedback via NetGalley. Needless to say i am a big fantasy reader and love getting lost in a world that makes my imagination spark! Thoroughly enjoyed The Jasad Heir and will read more from this author!

Thank you Netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review! Oof I took a year to read this. I just checked the dates and yikes. I took a lot of long breaks 😂 It wasn’t because I didn’t like it! I got really sidetracked by other books and I knew I would like this one. I love the magic and lore of this world. It’s so cool and the amount of world building is amazing. The characters have a lot of depth. The slow burn had me squealing and kicking my feet. This is slloowwwww burn 😂 A bit of it was agony but so so worth it. I was surprised how little of the book the trials took up and that was honestly refreshing! It didn’t become another hunger games esque book and had a lot more depth and the main character actually does training and doesn’t just magically know everything! Overall a very solid read and I can’t wait for book 2!

Ok I got to page 203, so almost 50% in … there’s just so much about this book that I dislike. I wanted to like it so bad because I really want to see more fantasy and Romantasy I diverse settings. This being an Egyptian setting I thought would be so fun and unique, but unfortunately it felt like a carbon copy of so many Romantasy and YA fantasy books.. it certainly did not feel like an adult book. The world building was a bit confusing, and I believe it would have benefitted from a cast of characters directory and also maybe an index of cities/regions. History seemed to be info dumped at random, and don’t get me started on “the hero”.. he’s already stabbed the heroine like 3 times! I can’t get behind such awful hero, and I don’t get why she’s now trying to impress him. The pacing in this book is so incredibly slow while the character building isn’t really happening either. There’s these “trials” but no explanation as to why they’re even happening… idk. I don’t get this book. I won’t be rating it because I’m technically dnf-ing before the 50% mark, but if I did it’d be 2 stars.

"There is no such thing as a worthy sacrifice. There are only those who die, and those willing to let them.”

considering this is a debut novel, it is pretty good! i definitely felt like the beginning 50% of the story was excellent but i did feel the writing/flow was a bit stilted in parts and i think the novel could have been significantly cut down to not be as long.
sefa and marek are side characters who are close friends of sylvia but at times it felt like they were just there and it was hard for me to really connect with them or believe they would go to such lengths for sylvia, but maybe that’s just me.
i did like arin (he’s such a cutie with his plans and perfectionism) and i liked sylvia too so will be considering picking up the next book!

This was an enjoyable debut. I was drawn to this one as it indicated that it was inspired by Egyptian myths and legends. The synopsis gives you all you need to know about this one. It was sometimes a bit clunky with slow pacing. Hashem has an entire world to share with the reader and struggled at times to lay it out. Readers will not get instant gratification during the read but by the end you'll understand why you kept going.

Perfect read. Perfect story. Perfect characters. This book was so immersive and I couldn’t put it down. I can’t wait to see what happens next. I wish I saw more of this book being talked about.

*** I received this book as an ARC in exchange for a review, and all thoughts and opinions are my own ***


I was very excited when I got the ARC for this book! I’m south Asian and Muslim, which means I crave familiarity in my reading. This book only seemed to scratch a little bit of that itch, but it was a very fun read nevertheless! It does pose questions about truthful marketing, I didn’t see a lot of modern Egyptian-inspired elements, but it didn’t bother me personally too much.

There were a lot of positives about the book, but also some aspects I didn’t enjoy. Some of my favorite parts were Sylvia. Writing a strong female character is hard. Often, I come to find the FMC insufferable, because what people consider “female rage” or “strength” is borderline sociopathic, stubborn, and annoying. I believed Sylvia had a good mix of being morally grey but also knowing where to draw the line.

About Arin, I love smart men. He was shown to be clever but I wish it was more fleshed out. It seemed to be more a case of “telling, not showing” and it usually was because Sylvia would be like “he’s so smart, he’s got it all figured out before I did” multiple times in the book. Plus, Part of why I had an issue with it was that we got virtually no Arin POVs. I think you need to see more of the male love interest to truly get why their relationship blossomed. The romance was a little underdeveloped, and it was difficult to understand how Arin ended up falling for Sylvia at all. Three two-page chapters of Arin’s POV was barely enough for me to understand how it happened at all. It frustrated me a little at one point, and I’ve come to realize that I cannot read romances that don’t have dual POVs, because I can’t get both sides. Around 70% it becomes obvious that Arin likes her, and what he did is so out of character. A man who swore to never give his heart falls for a woman he trained for a few months?

That gives way to pacing, another issue I had. The story is based on a set of trials, like the competition in the Hunger Games, except the trials, the entire point of the book, only starts 70% in. The plot and the romance pacing was very off, making it difficult to stay in the story. I would have points where I was very engaged, and others where it was physically difficult to keep reading, and this happened often after the quarter-way mark. I think a lot of the filler in between, while necessary, itself needs to be condensed. This is related to the Writing style, which I really enjoyed in the beginning, but I started getting lost after 30%. The Writing was beautiful, giving way to gorgeous imagery, but then ended up having complicated descriptions that didn’t make sense because there was so much fluff in the descriptions. It made the language choppy and inconsistent with its eloquence, sometimes being beautiful and other times not making sense. I’m an imaginative person, and I would see descriptions that I can’t figure out the positioning for at all. I get that editing for indie authors is difficult, but I do think this could have done with another round or two of beta reading.

I have seen reviews with reservations about themes of colonialism, and if I remember correctly, Arin was a child when Sylvia lost her family and kingdom, so I’m not entirely sure about what to think of it.

All in all, this book had very few complications in its execution for a debut novel. I want to congratulate Hashem for writing a book I inhaled in 3 days!! There are room for improvements, and I look forward to seeing them happen in the next book. Until then, Arin and Sylvia have my whole heart

4.75 stars I was terrified to read this book for the longest time because of how big it was but I am so happy I read it. This was a fast-paced story of an heir to a lost kingdom from genocide and who hid for years before being found. Though she was found, she was not found out. I cannot wait to read the next in this series and hope it lives up to this beginning.

3.75 stars!

I have really mixed feelings about this because I felt like the world was very interesting, the politics were very interesting, and the unanswered questions left me intrigued for a sequel. However, what really fell flat for me was the romance. While I was reading, I was increasingly distracted by how I didn't want the main couple of the story to be together. I also thought, like many fantasy books with trials, that things came a little too easy for the main character. I wanted a bit more struggle.

I know that I definitely want to continue this series because there were a lot of intriguing elements and the ending left me hooked, but I do think the romance knocked it down for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I really liked this! The intriguing worldbuilding combined with the inner turmoil Sylvia feels about her past and what she does or does not owe Jasad kept me absolutely riveted. I loved all of the side characters (except Vaun, he can die). Arin and Slyvia's slow-building relationship felt exceptionally real and I liked how even though they felt attraction, they didn't suddenly let go of their mutual dislike. The tournament was interesting and well-paced. I'm very excited for the sequel because I need to see how everything plays out.

I don't know that I can articulate all that I love about this book. I think it has a lot of similarities to Throne of Glass, which is one of my all-time favorites, but it's different enough that they still feel like two separate books. I loved all the characters, and the slow burn was killing me in the BEST way!! No one is doing slow burn like Miss Sara Hashem. I've already recommended this to half of the people I know, and I'm coming for the other half, too.

This book was amazing and I absolutely devoured it. I wish I had read it sooner and I am now impatiently waiting for the sequel.

While I loved pretty much everything about this book, the star of the show for me was the characters. Sara did such a superb job of creating flawed but lovable characters. Literally, no characters are perfect, but that is what makes them so interesting. First we have our MC Sylvia. She is sassy and prickly and so funny (I laughed out loud many times while reading). She acts selfishly sure, but once she’s let you into her heart, she would give anything to keep you safe. She’s also a bit of a mystery that you have to keep reading to unravel and it’s because she also doesn’t fully know herself.

Arin was scrumptious. From his first scene in the book I was hooked. But the kind of hooked like: should I be liking this? This guy is kind of a scary red flag, but I think I like this. His interactions with Sylvia were everything. I was squealing, I was blushing, I was feeling the tension through every scene. Our author here knows how to write actual enemies to lovers and really good slow burn.

The side characters were also amazing. The guards were so funny. Sefa and Marek showed us what true loyalty, friendship, and love are. Even the addition of Hanim was so good. I don’t like Hanim, don’t get me wrong, but when Sylvia would hear thoughts in Hanim’s voice, they were usually really interesting/important points being made (not always right but definitely something to think about).

Now for the plot. It was done really well in my opinion. I’ve read a lot of competition books and I get kind of tired of them at a certain point, but this book was only about 20% the competition. The rest was other things and I think that was done really well. It gave more time for character interactions and growth and gave us more world building while still giving interesting plot points that weren’t from the competition. It felt pretty evenly paced to me. While there weren’t necessarily major events constantly happening, there was a lot of growth and revelations which had me hooked and devouring the book to know more about our MCs and the Jasadis.

I’m honestly astounded this was a debut book. Sara did such a phenomenal job with creating complex characters that I fell in love with, an interesting world with so much history I want to know more about, and a really interesting plot that has me needing the sequel. I can’t wait to read more from Sara because I can definitely see her becoming a favorite author of mine.

Thank you so much to Netgalley, Orbit, and Sara for the ARC I read.

Egyptian/Middle eastern-inspired fantasy? I was sat and ready! Sara Hashem is an incredibly talented author and just from her debut I can tell she's got a great career ahead of her. I'm not a fan of the politics of this book and how it was explored. That might be a personal take but it takes away from the overall experience for me.

However, I do love an unreliable and chaotic narrator as the main female lead. We need more stories about women who are often more wrong than right and not a pillar of sacrifice for every character around her. I'm excited to read what the author has in store next!

I forgot to leave a review for this, but I really enjoyed it! It's been out for ages, so I won't say much more than I need to for my star rating. <3