REVIEW: Exquisite Captive by Heather Demetrios

Summary:  Forced to obey her master. Compelled to help her enemy. Determined to free herself. Nalia is a jinni of tremendous ancient power, the only survivor of a coup that killed nearly everyone she loved. Stuffed into a bottle and sold by a slave trader, she’s now in hiding on the dark caravan, the lucrative jinni slave trade between Arjinna and Earth, where jinn are forced to grant wishes and obey their human masters’ every command. She’d give almost anything to be free of the golden shackles that bind her to Malek, her handsome, cruel master, and his lavish Hollywood lifestyle. Enter Raif, the enigmatic leader of Arjinna’s revolution and Nalia’s sworn enemy. He promises to free Nalia from her master so that she can return to her ravaged homeland and free her imprisoned brother—all for an unbearably high price. Nalia’s not sure she can trust him, but Raif’s her only hope of escape. With her enemies on the hunt, Earth has become more perilous than ever for Nalia. There’s just one catch: for Raif’s unbinding magic to work, Nalia must gain possession of her bottle…and convince the dangerously persuasive Malek that she truly loves him. Battling a dark past and harboring a terrible secret, Nalia soon realizes her freedom may come at a price too terrible to pay: but how far is she willing to go for it?

Rating: 6 out of 10

Overall:  A good read and a series I'll be continuing when the next book comes out.  I loved the world of Exquisite Captive and all the characters that populate it.  Would I recommend this book?  Yes.  It's beautifully written and tells a great story, you just have to have a little patience with it.

Thoughts:

Some things I liked:

1. Nalia's growth as a character throughout the book and her devotion to her little brother, who she's not even supposed to have a real relationship with because of some weird rules set by her race of jinni.  Basically she's supposed to be this emotionless warrior/royal knight who only feels love for the realm (Arjinna/jinni world).  She slowly breaks that mold even more than she already had at the start of the book, after three years of slavery.

2. How Demetrios handled the "romance" between Nalia and Malek (her master).  The title and the description leads you to believe this is a love triangle-ish book and that there's some sex involved.  And while the seduction of Malek plays an important part in the story (it's how she plans to steal her bottle), it's made perfectly clear that Nalia is an unwilling participant who's only doing it because she has to.  And they don't end up having sex, she drugs him, which takes her most of the book to think of doing.

3.  The sexuality among the jinn.  Nalia reveals her only experience with sex is a few experiments with the other girls of her race.  Literally one sentence.  It's not made into a big fan fair. It's just what it is.  There are a few other moments, one with Zanari and another with one of Haran's victims being the most notable.  But sex isn't a big, shameful secret in this like in some other YA books.  The only thing that's clearly put into the wrong is Malek's actions and advances toward Nalia, as I said above.

4. Raif and the revolution.  Arjinna works on the caste system, where serfs are slaves.  Raif and his family were serfs who created the spell to free themselves and others, and led a revolution against the rule of their overlords and the royal race of jinni, Nalia's race.  I loved the details we got about it and Raif's character/character development.

Some things I did not like:

1.  There were times in the story that could have been skipped over some or condensed.  Like the parts with Haran's victims.  Don't get me wrong, I liked those parts, but I knew how every single one was going to end.  They weren't Nalia and he was going to eat them.  One or two of those parts would have sufficed.

2.  How long it took to get relevant information.  There's a little info about the jinni races in the beginning, what smoke/eye color belong to each race mostly.  I went into the story know Nalia's race and when I read that little bit of info, I was confused about why Nalia didn't match the description.  It's later explained a few chapters in, but having that explanation sooner would have helped a bit.  Same goes for other pieces of info.  Though I flew through this in about two days, others will have found this to have dragged on a bit and having a couple of bits of info sooner would have helped keep interest.  Like why she was so damn guilty and how she was responsible for the death of her entire race.

3.  The fact that everything in this book took place in a matter of days.  Like, a shit ton of things happened.  Raif and Nalia falling in love in what? three days?  Okay...I mean they're cute together, but still...