this one was kinda interesting. the romance is absolutely well done and if you just close your brain this one is absolutely awesome. but the worldbuilding falls apart with even the slightest blink. 3.5 stars, rounded up. tysm for the arc.

3.75⭐️ — A Unique, Fast-Paced Fantasy with a Slow-Burning Middle

I have mixed feelings about This Wretched Dawn. While the story dives right in with a fast-paced start and ends on a strong note, the middle portion dragged a bit for me and lost some of that initial momentum. That said, the world and premise are definitely unique—unlike anything I’ve read in fantasy before.

Despite the pacing issues, the story kept me curious, especially as the tension started building back up toward the end. And that cliffhanger? It definitely has me intrigued to see where the next book takes us!

Thank you to NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

DNF after 20% - I've read YA books before but this one wasn't for me. I wanted to push through but couldn't as the world building was a bit confusing. I also felt like I wasn't connecting to the characters as I normally would either.

This book is amazing! The story was very well written and full of plot twist and it was very well written. And the romance! It is a must read.

Review: 3.75 stars

This one was an okay read. Anna Liang, the daughter of the second to the emperor of Midnight Courts is sent to London to work with Paris, her ex-boyfriend and the prince of Dawn Court to seek the thief that stole the Dawn’s court biological weapon which has a potential of destroying the Dawn Court. At the same time, she is also meant to spy on the goings on Dawn Court and send information back to her court.

This story is fast paced from the start of Paris and Anna re-meeting again after three years when they ended their relationship. Like true enemies, they seek to kill each other at the start. The tension between both characters is great. I struggled a little with the romance because it felt a little off - there was just something lacking despite the tension and the push-pull moments. This story also had some strong friendship bonds and found family trope given Paris’s bonds with 4 friends who helped out with the mission and Anna’s strong friendship with Josephine who helped her out with this mission.

The plot was somewhat predictable but the writing style makes it easy to read and a fast read. It makes you want to continue reading to find out what happens next. For a YA fiction, it had some good twists that added to the story! The Midnight Courts takes to Asian elements with an emperor in gold as the head and the celebration of the autumn festival. The Dawn Courts takes to Western Elements with the opulence of balls and sporting events like Polo.

The other reason I struggled with this book is the believability of certain elements. For example, Anna’s and Paris’s relationship - this could have been explored more in terms of flashbacks of their past. The book is told in Anna’s POV which mostly focuses on her and her thoughts like what she felt for Paris was very surface level. Given her parents strong involvement with the court, she has no experience doing espionage yet she was their first choice to send? There were also some disjointed and unnecessary moments that didn’t really add to the plot. Certain parts felt too rushed when they should be drawn out….The world building also lacks some substance given that there was so little history in the story about it e.g., what led to the rise of both courts and why are they enemies?

Overall, I did enjoy this read! And watching out for that crazy ending because this means there will be a Book 2!

I’m feeling so conflicted about this! It’s not quite a four-star read for me but definitely more than a three-star.

Nine years after a fragile peace between the Midnight and Dawn Courts, a stolen poison threatens to reignite war. Anna Liang, daughter of a Midnight Court official, is sent to work with Paris, a Dawn Court prince and her former love, to find the culprit and clear her court’s name. Secretly tasked with infiltrating the Dawn Court’s espionage school and killing Paris, Anna struggles between duty and old feelings as secrets unravel.

This story gave me childhood friends to lovers to enemies, which I really enjoyed, especially since Anna and Paris come from rival courts! The tension between them was so good, and I liked Anna’s character, though she was a bit too stabby for my taste at times. I loved Anna and Paris together and definitely felt the chemistry, but I wished we’d gotten more depth from Paris earlier on. He opened up more toward the end, which I was eating up, but I wanted to know him better throughout.

One of the best things for me was the writing style. It’s clearly YA and easy to read, which I enjoyed immensely, especially after struggling through another book before this. I flew through half of this one in a single sitting because the writing flows well and the plot is fast-paced with twists and turns happening constantly. It felt like the perfect palate cleanser!

A few things bugged me, though. Like, why is Anna, who’s never been on a mission before, given the job of spying on and potentially killing a prince? Even she asks why it’s not her sister, who’s more qualified, and the answer felt flimsy for something so crucial. Some plot choices seemed unnecessarily complicated, especially for a mission that could decide war or peace.

I also wished we’d seen more of Anna and Paris’s relationship from before they parted ways three years ago. It’s mentioned often, but there were so few flashbacks or scenes showing what their bond used to be, and I wanted to feel everything Anna was feeling. Plus, the writing mostly focused on Anna’s emotions, and other characters’ feelings weren’t explored as deeply, which sometimes made it hard to connect with everyone. But I adored the friend group and the found family vibes!

I also wanted to learn more about the world itself and why the courts exist in the first place. A bit more backstory would have made the world feel richer. But that ending? It made me want to scream, in the best way. It was so wild and left me desperate for book two!

Overall, This Wretched Dawn was a fun, fast-paced read that kept me hooked. I’ll definitely be picking up the sequel!

After 20%, I’ve decided to DNF. The writing style was sometimes engaging, but I felt this was too YA for me to enjoy. The characters are really immature and the plot of sending her to London to a spy school despite her court being suspected of stealing the poison makes no sense. The characters names really annoyed me and there was just no development. Every interaction was 1 dimensional. Anna isn’t a believable spy or assassin. And there were way too many pop culture references. Very disappointed.

A modern espionage novel with fantasy twists and a Western/ Eastern setting conflict. Incredible.

This book really circulated around the conflict between the Midnight Court (Shanghai) and Dawn Court (London) and how easy it is to be caught in the middle of right and wrong in the name of supporting your court. It really explored the duality of one character who grew up with a foot in both, and one character who was from one, but loved one who ended up in the other.

I loved the star crossed lovers vibe, and the constant tension between. The teasing of history meshed with the present and the question of whether family loyalty or loyalty to each other would triumph.

The writing made it easy to sink into the book, and the world building was believable. I wish we had a bit more information on the courts and how it plays in with the rest of the world, but admittedly it isn’t important to the plot so I think it’s just my sheer curiosity.

Overall, I really loved this. The ending had my heart twisting and I hope there’s another one coming to show what’s next…

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This Wretched Dawn is sharp, lyrical, and soaked in rebellion. Melinda Gong writes like a poet with a blade—every sentence intentional, every scene filled with political weight and personal loss. The world is richly imagined, with strong cultural roots and an oppressive regime that feels far too familiar.

The story centers on resistance—not just to systems, but to grief, expectation, and history. It’s a slow-burning revolution, full of sharp beauty and brutal truths. Complex, courageous, and worthy of every page.

I really loved this story.
I do think the writhing needs to be worked on a bit more though. Some sentences felt weird, like they were there to fill out the text. But again the story in it self was great!

this book was definitely interesting! as i read the synopsis, i was VERY reminded of these violent delights by chloe gong, and the general concept is true. the first few chapters of the book is set in shanghai, and the fmc has high expectations with her family, and the mmc has high expectations from his dad, so the overall dynamic is set up to be very similar. i will say that the similarities end at the setting. when it comes to the story itself, i found it very fast paced. the fmc was shipped off to her mission very quickly, and i felt that she and the mmc were put together very conveniently. otherwise, thought it was a pretty entertaining read!

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC! All comments are of my own opinion and freely given.

-second chance romance
-enemies to lovers
-espionage and double agents
-spy school
-betrayal

I love so many of the tropes associated with this book, but I wasn’t in love with it at all. I thought it was good, but am certain someone else will love it!

Despite the expectations I had for both the genre and the plot, This Wretched Dawn was not for me. The plot starts well, but ends up being monotonous; important characters are neither mentioned nor appear until halfway through the book; and some plots are dealt with and then disappear. A pity because This Wretched Dawn has a lot of potential.

A heartrending exploration of humanity. The ones that need to gorge themselves on violence for no reason other than to remind the people beneath them of their power, and the ones that fight to overturn the system for the hope of a brighter dawn.

The ending has me in shambles, so let’s go back to the beginning. *insert “you are not immune to propaganda” Garfield* One of the main messages of this book is that anyone is susceptible to propaganda. Being fed something from birth, whether it is intrinsically true or not, affects a person, their belief system, their behavior. Anna and Paris, our main pair, take the time to deconstruct why they think the way they do, what compels them to act. Others, however, like Anna’s sister Katarina, believe their leaders without question, even when it actively causes harm to those on both sides. Even when action is consciously taken to unlearn harmful beliefs, there is always a seed of the old way left over, waiting for a moment of weakness to resurface.

I adore a political intrigue plot, and Gong’s is perfectly woven. Even when I had woven some threads together, I never saw the whole tapestry until it had already been unveiled. I await the continuation of our heroes’ story with bated breath.

3.5 stars - enjoyable and perfect for a one-sit read!

I loved the rival courts drama, and the opposite sides' tension between the main couple.

I wasn't super sold on the writing at first, and it took me a longer time than I would've liked to get fully engaged with the story, but the FMC won me over and I loved her voice.

We love an ACTUAL rivals/enemies to lovers too!!

I had to sit with my thoughts on this book for a long while before I felt able to give it a star rating and clearly articulate my thoughts. To put it more bluntly, this book is so incredibly similar to another book that I had to decide if I could actually review this as an independent work. So that is what I will be trying to do in this review. To start with the positives, I found the plot very exciting. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, and there was so much action and some great twists. However, I did not like the ending at all. I also struggled with the characters, especially the main character. I felt she was naive and lacked development, and had way too many internal monologues about her feelings. I did not think she had chemistry with Paris at all, and I was never invested in their relationship. That might have been in part because I never fully understood their political differences. I found the dual court system underdeveloped, and the rest of the world confusing. So overall, while I found this book easy to read, I found it lacking in the end.

This book struggles to find its audience. The world building is almost non existent and the courts make no sense. I also don’t know what age group this book is for. This was a miss for me, which makes me sad because the premise was so good!!

I admit that writing a review of this book is a bit difficult: I had high expectations (I was won over by the ‘it's perfect for Chloe Gong's fans’) which were, however, disappointed. However, I cannot completely fail it.

There is a good idea behind it but I think the author failed to express its the full potential, the book in fact in my opinion is a bit naive and immature; in particular I would have preferred more work and attention on the plot, worldbuilding and side characters. All the attention is focused on the two main characters and their relationship, but the final impression is that I don't know them well and in general to me it all seems to remain very much on the surface without a real deepening, despite the fact that there are interesting points, especially in the complex and divided figure of Anna with her anxieties, fears and indecisions.

From the point of view of style, I did not like the far too many metaphors and the accumulation of adjectives and synonyms in the descriptions, instead of enriching the description itself, I had the impression that the author was undecided about which metaphor or adjectives to use and in order not to choose she used whatever came to mind.

Melinda Gong’s THIS WRETCHED DAWN is explosively good and entertaining from the first page to the very last. A thoroughly enjoyable read!

I just finished This Wretched Dawn and I’m still sorting through my feelings. I’d rate it a solid 3/5 stars. The premise pulled me in immediately -Shanghai royalty, political espionage, and a second-chance enemies-to-lovers setup? Sign me up.

The slow burn between Anna and Paris was everything I wanted. Their history, the tension, the longing. It absolutely delivered in that department. I found myself rooting for them even when they were at each other’s throats. That blend of betrayal, unresolved feelings, and forced proximity? Chef’s kiss.

That said, I do wish the plot had been a little easier to follow. There were moments I felt lost in the worldbuilding or unclear on the stakes. I think we were missing some of the backstory between the two leads, which could’ve added more emotional depth and helped clarify their motivations. And while I live for romantic tension, some of it felt a little forced or repetitive.

Still, this book had a unique vibe that I haven’t seen in many romantasy titles, and I’d definitely read more by Melinda Gong. If you like political intrigue, poison plots, and characters caught between love and duty, this one might be your next fix.