Melanie Dickerson is known for her ability to tie in God, romance, and religion to her fantastical/fairytale books. And that is why I will always recommend her books.

Now, I didn't enjoy this book as much as much as other of Ms. Dickerson's books (or other Christian-Romance books) but it is hard to pull off a good fairytale retelling.

This book takes a twist on the Aladdin story and brings it to life in a different way. We still get the images of the classic tale we are familiar with by exploring the hard life images of an orphan boy struggling to find his place in the world and a girl wanting be her own person. But we do miss out on the magical side of things that the classic tale brought us.

Aladdin and Krystin grew up together in the early 1400's of Germany. Aladdin as an orphan was never able to have a home or family of his own until her met Krystin, daughter of a duke. As the two grew from childhood to adulthood with one another they slowly fell in love. Without realizing it.

There were a few things about this book that bothered me and that was mainly in the execution of the growth of the characters. We jumped from their youth and up through the years through the first quarter of the book which was honestly a bit disorientating. I would have liked an initial introduction of how they knew each other and hen be more established in their relationship later on. By the time some of the main conflicts came about, I wasn't sure how old the characters were which effected my perception of them.

Aside from the basic idea of two characters falling in love out of social circles, there was nothing really that connected this book to the original Aladdin tale which was a little disappointing.

As is typical of Ms. Dickerson we see the characters come closer to God while grappling with their own questions and crises of faith. I think that's a great selling point for these books, we can look into our own lives as we also gain insight to what our relationships with God can become.