It finished better than it started and I learned some interesting things about the Middle East to boot!

I've wanted to read this book for a long time. I'm glad I finally got around to it!

Overall impression:
The Tyrant's Daughter has both a global and a personal scale. It would be great for people who want characters struggling with their identities amidst political turmoil.

Read the full review on YABooksCentral.com.

This was good, but I felt like there was something missing. It felt a little shallow ... like it could have been much more. But an overall good read.

Review found on The Life & Times Book Blog.


The Tyrant’s Daughter is a story that I wasn’t quite expecting. Political intrigue has never really been my thing. But I kept seeing this book pop up and I heard a lot of good things about it, so I thought, why not take a look.
I am very glad that I did, because what I discovered was at least to me a fresh take on YA fiction that gave me the change I needed at the time. No love triangles, no boy crazed teens, and no magic…

Fifteen year old Laila is attempting to adjust to her life in the U.S. along with her mother Yasmin, and her seven year old brother Bastien after her father known as ‘The Dictator’ was murdered in their home country.

The book is told through Laila’s point of view and it follows her through her interactions at school and at home. I thought Laila was a bit naïve about what was going on in her country and what role her father played in that, but it’s sort of expected of someone who has been sheltered. She may have had a pampered upbringing, but she is also smart and has a good heart. It was easy to like her and hope for the best.

Things are really different than where she is from and what she is used to. It’s a little of a culture shock. She goes from living in a palace with tons of servants, to living in a small apartment and having to do everything herself. Laila does her best to adapt and even manages to forge a few friendships during the process.

Her voice felt real and honest. That’s what I liked about this story. I have no clue what it is really like to have to live through a war going on right outside your doorstep and then having to flee to safety so you won’t be harmed like Laila and her family had to. But the struggles she encountered, her trying to learn life in America, her worries and fears all seemed to be genuine and reflected that of a young teenage girl trying to figure out how she fits into this new world.

This book will make you think about your own life, and how small some of the issues we face are compared to others in different places around the world. It was a bit of an eye opening experience.


**I received this book on behalf of the Publisher in exchange for nothing but my honest opinion.**

Carleson, J.C. The Tyrant's Daughter. 2014.

Laila is the daughter of a middle eastern ruler, and when he is assassinated, she and her family flee to the United States while her evil uncle takes over the country. Now Laila is straddling two worlds: at home she has to take care of her brother and her mother, all the while wondering if they'll ever return to their country. At school, she's looked at as just another international student and has to adjust to American customs.

I liked the concept of this book - a family from another place that is living here has as much of a back story as anyone else, and sometimes it's easy to forget that other people might have more things on their mind than we can imagine. I didn't find Laila to be very likable, though, and I didn't want her family to go back to her wreck of a country where her life might very well be in danger, just so her little brother can be king. Overall, a good read and worth the time invested.

Recommended for: teens
Red Flags: violence, alcohol use
Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

This was a good audiobook to listen to. The story had enough tension built in to it to keep listening. While it was a statement on an unnamed foreign country where one dictator takes the place of another, it was also a statement on American culture. The ending is a bit abrupt, but ties most of the plot lines together.

Also posted on Rally the Readers.

* I received an ARC via NetGalley.

2.5 Stars

I rarely read current events-related books, but I couldn’t help being intrigued by the synopsis for The Tyrant’s Daughter. The fact that the author is a former CIA officer also piqued my interest in a title that otherwise would not have caught my eye. The expectations that I formed in my head based on the blurb and the author’s background didn’t quite line up with how the story actually played out, though.

The narrative is told from the perspective of fifteen-year-old Laila, who was until very recently a princess, the daughter of the ruler of a Middle Eastern country that is never named. Laila’s royal world came crashing down the day her uncle killed her father and seized power. Laila, her mother, and little brother, Bastien, have fled to America, where the family is living in drastically reduced circumstances. Although Laila comes across as a fairly sympathetic character who’s caught between her past and present lives, I found her narrative voice detached for the most part. I couldn’t muster much emotional investment in her story, not because there was anything blatantly wrong with the prose, but it just didn’t jump off the page at me.

I read a little too much into the part of the book’s summary that references Laila’s mother, Yasmin, negotiating with the CIA to put her son on the throne. I was hoping to see the author’s personal experience with the agency lend a unique angle to the novel, but the events in the book don’t venture too far from what you’d find in a collection of news stories. Yasmin does engage in some slick maneuvering to get what she wants, but the results, while not completely lacking surprise, aren’t exactly jaw-dropping, either. There’s also a bit of an info dump toward the end of the book.

This review has been a challenge to write because although I didn’t have any particularly salient issues with The Tyrant’s Daughter, it also wasn’t a page-turner for me. It’s equally difficult to rate this type of book, where you’re not really leaning toward liking it or disliking it. My rating reflects being unable to get into the story more than anything, so if this sounds like a book that interests you, I urge you to give it a read for yourself.

Laila is forced to flee her homeland with her mother and six year old brother after the assassination of her father. She attempts to find her place in her new home and through the political maneuverings that surround her. This book is marketed for children's/young adult but deals with the adult topics of loss, politics, and difficult choices.

Read my full review at: http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2014/02/the-tyrants-daughter.html

*** Reviewed based on a publisher’s galley received through NetGalley ***

This was a very powerful read about a teenage girl trying to navigate her family's move to the US after her father, a powerful dictator, is killed in a revolution in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Her conflicts with American teenage culture and her own identity allow the reader to ask questions about our own perceptions and expectations of others. Laila is a noteworthy and important protagonist, which helps make this a memorable book to read.