What do you think?
Rate this book
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Fantasy (2023)A sumptuous, gothic-infused story about a marriage that is unraveled by dark secrets, a friendship cursed to end in tragedy, and the danger of believing in fairy tales—the breathtaking adult debut from New York Times bestselling author Roshani Chokshi.
Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. He was a scholar of myths. She was heiress to a fortune. They exchanged gifts and stories and believed they would live happily ever after—and in exchange for her love, Indigo extracted a promise: that her bridegroom would never pry into her past.
But when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is dying and the couple is forced to return to her childhood home, the House of Dreams, the bridegroom will soon find himself unable to resist. For within the crumbling manor’s extravagant rooms and musty halls, there lurks the shadow of another girl: Azure, Indigo’s dearest childhood friend who suddenly disappeared. As the house slowly reveals his wife’s secrets, the bridegroom will be forced to choose between reality and fantasy, even if doing so threatens to destroy their marriage . . . or their lives.
Combining the lush, haunting atmosphere of Mexican Gothic with the dreamy enchantment of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a spellbinding and darkly romantic page-turner about love and lies, secrets and betrayal, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.
Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. He was a scholar of myths. She was heiress to a fortune. They exchanged gifts and stories and believed they would live happily ever after—and in exchange for her love, Indigo extracted a promise: that her bridegroom would never pry into her past.
But when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is dying and the couple is forced to return to her childhood home, the House of Dreams, the bridegroom will soon find himself unable to resist. For within the crumbling manor’s extravagant rooms and musty halls, there lurks the shadow of another girl: Azure, Indigo’s dearest childhood friend who suddenly disappeared. As the house slowly reveals his wife’s secrets, the bridegroom will be forced to choose between reality and fantasy, even if doing so threatens to destroy their marriage . . . or their lives.
Combining the lush, haunting atmosphere of Mexican Gothic with the dreamy enchantment of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a spellbinding and darkly romantic page-turner about love and lies, secrets and betrayal, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published February 14, 2023
About the author
Roshani Chokshi
46 books10.9k followersRoshani Chokshi is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestselling series The Star-Touched Queen, The Gilded Wolves and Aru Shah and The End of Time, which Time Magazine named one of the Top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time. Her adult debut, The Last Tale of The Flower Bride, was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller. Her novels have been translated into more than two dozen languages and often draw upon world mythology and folklore. Chokshi is a member of the National Leadership Board for the Michael C. Carlos Museum and lives in Georgia with her husband and their cat whose diabolical plans must regularly be thwarted.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,774 reviews
March 7, 2023
i think i liked this? i dunno. its really weird, but the writing is quite lovely.
i mean, theres no doubt that RC can weave a tale and this one feels quite experimental compared to her previous books. im not sure i fully understand everything i read, but im walking away feel satisfied?
kinda hard to pinpoint how im feeling about this one specifically, but im interested in seeing what kinds of other adult novels RC will write. i think if youre up for something odd, yet pretty, then this is a book you might want to try.
↠ 4 stars
i mean, theres no doubt that RC can weave a tale and this one feels quite experimental compared to her previous books. im not sure i fully understand everything i read, but im walking away feel satisfied?
kinda hard to pinpoint how im feeling about this one specifically, but im interested in seeing what kinds of other adult novels RC will write. i think if youre up for something odd, yet pretty, then this is a book you might want to try.
↠ 4 stars
May 10, 2024
‘You never forget the moment when beauty turns to horror.’
Hope is a powerful force, pushing us on even when situations seem dire and make us believe that even the impossible is possible. Fairy tales are like tiny doorways into the realm of vast possibility, where even a poor kitchen maid can become queen, a king become a beast, and a tiny seed can grow to a magical land amongst the clouds. ‘In the end, a fairy tale is nothing more than a sense of hope,’ the narrator remarks in Roshani Chokshi’s The Last Tale of the Flower Bride. They are something that ‘whispers to us that we are extraordinary’ and teach us ‘the dragons can be killed’ as G.K. Chesterton once said of fairy tales. However, ‘hope lures and tricks’ and as folklorist warns, in fairy tales ‘the sweetest tongue has the sharpest tooth.’ Drawing from an eclectic mix of folklore and fairy tales, such as the story Blodeudd from which the novel gets its name, Chokshi crafts a gothic tale of menace and mystery like a modern day fairy tale where everything is either a sign of possible magic or horrific gaslighting sending the characters either to riches or ruin. With gorgeous prose that glistens like both a treasure and a threat, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a deeply distressing tale that perfectly captures the spirit of fairy tales while examining the lies and hopes we believe, the way wealth can shelter a person even from a sense of humanity, and how there is always a story lurking, ready to ensnare us in its jaws.
‘If you combed through enough fairy tales, untangled their roots, and shook out their branches, you would find that they are infested with oaths. Oaths are brittle things, not unlike an egg…there is one thing they all share: they must be broken for there to be a story. Only a shattered promise yields a rich, glittering yolk of a tale.’
I devoured this book in a single day, realizing it had bewitched my mind and trapped me in it’s pages as if to devour me in return. Here is the story of a poor professor of fairy tales, named only the Bridegroom, who manages to wed the unfathomably wealthy and mysterious Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada, a fellow lover of tales, who promises him unending happiness and security if he vows to never pry into her past. But when a dying aunt brings them to her childhood home, The House of Dreams, dark secrets reach out to be heard and offer their own rewards if they are unearthed. Will it be a tale like Melusine, where a broken vow runs off the beloved forever, or more akin to Eros and Psyche where a betrayal can be overcome. Or will the secrets be irreparably horrifying? It is a novel where the less you know going in, the better as there are some well executed twists and the whole book is dripping in foreshadowing, so I’ll avoid spoilers but continue at your discretion. The book rotates between the perspective of the Bridegroom and Azure, a teenage girl who was so close to Indigo they believed they ‘shared a single soul’, and as the stories weave we feel the past catching up to the present like a scream brewing in our throats.
‘Our illusions weave roses around us, and when we try to escape, we are met with thorns.’
What really makes this story work is how seemingly effortlessly Chonski transports us into the realm of fairy tales. The prose moves with a dreamlike quality to it, shimmering as if capturing the power of moonlight and enticing us further into the dark recesses of the novel. And dark it is, much more than I ever expected, and while this novel disturbed me in many ways I was delighted for it all the while. The tone overwhelms you like an enchantment and her offkilter descriptions and observations build an eerie, gothic atmosphere you can get lost in like a fog. Birds take to the sky ‘like a scream given shape,’ skies are ‘the color of scraped eggshell’ and the House groans, gurgles and sighs in all sorts of uneasy personifications. Much of the novel makes you second guess yourself, wondering if we are entering a realm of magical-realism—and, truthfully, wanting to believe in it for the sake of some of the characters—because the reality could be too horrifying.
‘The secret to everlasting love was fear. Fear tethered love in place. Without the terror that came from imagining a life without your beloved, there was no urgency in loving them.’
Fans of fairy tales will enjoy the frequent allusions and analysis of the genre, with the story stitching together the spirits of many tales such as the aforementioned tales, Bluebeard, and both the German tale Allerleirau as well as the English tale Catskin which Allerleirau is often retitled despite the differences between the two. Catskin will also become a nickname Indigo gives to Azure, much to Azure’s resentment of it, like a prophetic role to fill in order for the two girls to achieve their belief that they are magic beings waiting until the time is right to be returned to their kingdom. In this way the story is able to play with a multitude of tropes as the girls attempt to prove themselves and abstain from becoming too much of this world, fearing they will be a ‘Cast Out Susan’, referencing Susan Pevensie who was denied access to Narnia for liking boys and makeup too much.
‘“She looked like the nostalgia that settles in your ribs at the end of a story you have never read, yet nevertheless know.’
Much in the way fairy tales are easy to relate to and superimpose the messages over our own lives by using archetypal characters and narratives, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride sort of superimposes itself over the genre by incorporating many recognizable archetypes to reconfigure them for its own purposes. ‘Fairy tales are the purest and simplest expression of collective unconscious psychic processes,’ Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz writes in The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, ‘they represent the archetypes in their simplest, barest, and most concise form.’ In this way it is able to dive directly into a sharp, psychological horror by striking at our purest fears of selfhood. Is the person closest to you betraying you and is your whole identity being built around a lie?
‘Because of her, I believed I was someone who deserved things, someone for whom destiny itself had fashioned a cozy, star-lined pocket,’ Azure confesses about her lifelong attachment to Indigo,practically living with her in the House of Dreams and isolating herself from peers to be in inseparable duo their classmates fear. However, as the Bridgegroom warns ‘this is why fairy tales are dangerous: their words sneak into your veins and travel into the chambers of your heart, where they whisper of your exceptionalism…but we are not exceptional.’ Indigo is as much of a mystery as the central narrative mystery, and Chokshi is excellent at delivering a sense of unease and often revulsion around her.
Chokshi is at her finest when crafting how Indigo figures into both their lives, brilliantly balancing our uncertainty of her as a rose or a thorn, and like a window more than a body or—in the tropes of fairy tales—a path into the wilderness that may lead you to fortune or fatality.
‘Hallowed ground was not always a fixed, physical place. Some sacred spaces were indivisible, the taking of them an endless communion that ate of your flesh, drank of your blood, and its grisly alchemy fused itself to the very skin of your soul so that no matter where you were, you would never be without it.’
Location is always key in fairy tales, and The House of Dreams and the Otherworld—the secret hangout of the two girls—is like stepping into the familiar mystical places of any fairytale. Transformation is always a critical component of fairy tales and locations like a castle or forest tend to provide the catalyst for them. As Jack D. Zipes teaches ‘no one gains power over the forest, but the forest posses the power to change lives and alter destinies.’ In this way we see Indigo and Azure paying tribute to their Otherworld and reading signs in the ways the trees move or the roots reach for them as indications of their transformations. ‘Indigo and I were the Otherworld, and the Otherworld was us, and for as long as we lived, it would live too.’ Adding to the uncertainty if there is something magical actually happening is the House, another space of transformation, which each character seems to recognize as responding to them and encouraging them on their paths. It is more like a living, breathing character than a house, often reminding me of a warmer and welcoming version of the house from The Haunting of Hill House, or is it all in the character’s minds? This is contrasted with Jupiter’s house—Azure’s lecherous step-father, another classic fairy tale archetype—which ‘had never been a home at all to her but a mouth—a place that chewed and swallowed and fed on her so well she couldn’t even see how deep she was buried in it’s belly.’ These spaces that seem to hunt, seem to dream, seem to offer up possible rewards if only we are pure of heart and motives to grasp our destinies. Or, like those who throw back their shoulders and square up to the minotaur, will they quickly learn they were not exceptional as they feared they weren’t right as their life is pulled from their bodies.
‘Until that moment, my life has been about the collecting of knowledge. Now the House of Dreams was tempting me with a different ending if only I would do it’s bidding…Thus, like all the fair-of-face fools before me, I rejected my knowledge and I believed’
Few books have unsettled me quite like this one. For those who appreciate trigger warnings, the list is long with this one and the rampant manipulation and gaslighting is intense. As fairy tales are often cautionary and critical of power and obdurate establishment, Chokshi brandishes her literary blade at those who’s wealth becomes a fortress protecting them and trampling others underfoot. Even judicial systems can bend to their will, and Chokshi provides a startling character development on how those who want for nothing and know they hold power over others lose a feeling of empathy towards those in their grip. People are playthings or pawns, and someone with a vast imagination and expertise at narratives can construct entire realities for the sake of manipulating others to serve them. As Aunt Hippolyta, also named Tati (a woman rumored to have witchcraft-like powers but is reduced to serving Indigo and the estate not unlike her namesake from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream who symbolizes the repressed power of women) warns ‘people like her can remake reality as they so wish, but we are forced to live in the lands they leave behind.’ We see this all the time in the world, the wealthy living out fairytale fantasies globetrotting and wanting for nothing while others work themselves into the grave in order to uphold the systems providing wealth for the few and debt for the many. And fear is often used to keep them in line.
‘But she saw something in me. Something that turned her kiss into a knife that cut me free from the dark.’
For how often the term “dark fairy tale” gets thrown about to mixed results, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is one that truly deserves the claim. ‘Every fairy tale has blood flecked on its muzzle,’ Chokshi writes and this story has teeth and horror lurks everywhere for those brave enough to look. I especially enjoyed how much this story captures emotion, especially allowing the Bridegroom to express emotion (which I think is possibly why he is a sympathetic character who is ushered onto a quest to test him instead of some toxic character swallowing emotion away). As dark, eerie and threatening as any quest in these tales of wonder and possibility, and with glittering and gorgeous prose to propel us down the path, Chokshi weaves a tale that will seep into you and transfix you to keep turning the pages.
4.5/5
‘Too often the truth of a memory lives not in the mind but in the heart, in the subtle and sacred organization that makes up one's identity. But it is a tender place to reach, and I am wounded by touching it.’
Hope is a powerful force, pushing us on even when situations seem dire and make us believe that even the impossible is possible. Fairy tales are like tiny doorways into the realm of vast possibility, where even a poor kitchen maid can become queen, a king become a beast, and a tiny seed can grow to a magical land amongst the clouds. ‘In the end, a fairy tale is nothing more than a sense of hope,’ the narrator remarks in Roshani Chokshi’s The Last Tale of the Flower Bride. They are something that ‘whispers to us that we are extraordinary’ and teach us ‘the dragons can be killed’ as G.K. Chesterton once said of fairy tales. However, ‘hope lures and tricks’ and as folklorist warns, in fairy tales ‘the sweetest tongue has the sharpest tooth.’ Drawing from an eclectic mix of folklore and fairy tales, such as the story Blodeudd from which the novel gets its name, Chokshi crafts a gothic tale of menace and mystery like a modern day fairy tale where everything is either a sign of possible magic or horrific gaslighting sending the characters either to riches or ruin. With gorgeous prose that glistens like both a treasure and a threat, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a deeply distressing tale that perfectly captures the spirit of fairy tales while examining the lies and hopes we believe, the way wealth can shelter a person even from a sense of humanity, and how there is always a story lurking, ready to ensnare us in its jaws.
‘If you combed through enough fairy tales, untangled their roots, and shook out their branches, you would find that they are infested with oaths. Oaths are brittle things, not unlike an egg…there is one thing they all share: they must be broken for there to be a story. Only a shattered promise yields a rich, glittering yolk of a tale.’
I devoured this book in a single day, realizing it had bewitched my mind and trapped me in it’s pages as if to devour me in return. Here is the story of a poor professor of fairy tales, named only the Bridegroom, who manages to wed the unfathomably wealthy and mysterious Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada, a fellow lover of tales, who promises him unending happiness and security if he vows to never pry into her past. But when a dying aunt brings them to her childhood home, The House of Dreams, dark secrets reach out to be heard and offer their own rewards if they are unearthed. Will it be a tale like Melusine, where a broken vow runs off the beloved forever, or more akin to Eros and Psyche where a betrayal can be overcome. Or will the secrets be irreparably horrifying? It is a novel where the less you know going in, the better as there are some well executed twists and the whole book is dripping in foreshadowing, so I’ll avoid spoilers but continue at your discretion. The book rotates between the perspective of the Bridegroom and Azure, a teenage girl who was so close to Indigo they believed they ‘shared a single soul’, and as the stories weave we feel the past catching up to the present like a scream brewing in our throats.
‘Our illusions weave roses around us, and when we try to escape, we are met with thorns.’
What really makes this story work is how seemingly effortlessly Chonski transports us into the realm of fairy tales. The prose moves with a dreamlike quality to it, shimmering as if capturing the power of moonlight and enticing us further into the dark recesses of the novel. And dark it is, much more than I ever expected, and while this novel disturbed me in many ways I was delighted for it all the while. The tone overwhelms you like an enchantment and her offkilter descriptions and observations build an eerie, gothic atmosphere you can get lost in like a fog. Birds take to the sky ‘like a scream given shape,’ skies are ‘the color of scraped eggshell’ and the House groans, gurgles and sighs in all sorts of uneasy personifications. Much of the novel makes you second guess yourself, wondering if we are entering a realm of magical-realism—and, truthfully, wanting to believe in it for the sake of some of the characters—because the reality could be too horrifying.
‘The secret to everlasting love was fear. Fear tethered love in place. Without the terror that came from imagining a life without your beloved, there was no urgency in loving them.’
Fans of fairy tales will enjoy the frequent allusions and analysis of the genre, with the story stitching together the spirits of many tales such as the aforementioned tales, Bluebeard, and both the German tale Allerleirau as well as the English tale Catskin which Allerleirau is often retitled despite the differences between the two. Catskin will also become a nickname Indigo gives to Azure, much to Azure’s resentment of it, like a prophetic role to fill in order for the two girls to achieve their belief that they are magic beings waiting until the time is right to be returned to their kingdom. In this way the story is able to play with a multitude of tropes as the girls attempt to prove themselves and abstain from becoming too much of this world, fearing they will be a ‘Cast Out Susan’, referencing Susan Pevensie who was denied access to Narnia for liking boys and makeup too much.
‘“She looked like the nostalgia that settles in your ribs at the end of a story you have never read, yet nevertheless know.’
Much in the way fairy tales are easy to relate to and superimpose the messages over our own lives by using archetypal characters and narratives, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride sort of superimposes itself over the genre by incorporating many recognizable archetypes to reconfigure them for its own purposes. ‘Fairy tales are the purest and simplest expression of collective unconscious psychic processes,’ Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz writes in The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, ‘they represent the archetypes in their simplest, barest, and most concise form.’ In this way it is able to dive directly into a sharp, psychological horror by striking at our purest fears of selfhood. Is the person closest to you betraying you and is your whole identity being built around a lie?
‘Because of her, I believed I was someone who deserved things, someone for whom destiny itself had fashioned a cozy, star-lined pocket,’ Azure confesses about her lifelong attachment to Indigo,practically living with her in the House of Dreams and isolating herself from peers to be in inseparable duo their classmates fear. However, as the Bridgegroom warns ‘this is why fairy tales are dangerous: their words sneak into your veins and travel into the chambers of your heart, where they whisper of your exceptionalism…but we are not exceptional.’ Indigo is as much of a mystery as the central narrative mystery, and Chokshi is excellent at delivering a sense of unease and often revulsion around her.
‘[Indigo]was like peering straight into something primordial and desperate, where the inscrutable space between stars had once birthed myths and gods, built palaces of story and scripture in which human doubts found a place to rest their weary brows.’
Chokshi is at her finest when crafting how Indigo figures into both their lives, brilliantly balancing our uncertainty of her as a rose or a thorn, and like a window more than a body or—in the tropes of fairy tales—a path into the wilderness that may lead you to fortune or fatality.
‘Hallowed ground was not always a fixed, physical place. Some sacred spaces were indivisible, the taking of them an endless communion that ate of your flesh, drank of your blood, and its grisly alchemy fused itself to the very skin of your soul so that no matter where you were, you would never be without it.’
Location is always key in fairy tales, and The House of Dreams and the Otherworld—the secret hangout of the two girls—is like stepping into the familiar mystical places of any fairytale. Transformation is always a critical component of fairy tales and locations like a castle or forest tend to provide the catalyst for them. As Jack D. Zipes teaches ‘no one gains power over the forest, but the forest posses the power to change lives and alter destinies.’ In this way we see Indigo and Azure paying tribute to their Otherworld and reading signs in the ways the trees move or the roots reach for them as indications of their transformations. ‘Indigo and I were the Otherworld, and the Otherworld was us, and for as long as we lived, it would live too.’ Adding to the uncertainty if there is something magical actually happening is the House, another space of transformation, which each character seems to recognize as responding to them and encouraging them on their paths. It is more like a living, breathing character than a house, often reminding me of a warmer and welcoming version of the house from The Haunting of Hill House, or is it all in the character’s minds? This is contrasted with Jupiter’s house—Azure’s lecherous step-father, another classic fairy tale archetype—which ‘had never been a home at all to her but a mouth—a place that chewed and swallowed and fed on her so well she couldn’t even see how deep she was buried in it’s belly.’ These spaces that seem to hunt, seem to dream, seem to offer up possible rewards if only we are pure of heart and motives to grasp our destinies. Or, like those who throw back their shoulders and square up to the minotaur, will they quickly learn they were not exceptional as they feared they weren’t right as their life is pulled from their bodies.
‘Until that moment, my life has been about the collecting of knowledge. Now the House of Dreams was tempting me with a different ending if only I would do it’s bidding…Thus, like all the fair-of-face fools before me, I rejected my knowledge and I believed’
Few books have unsettled me quite like this one. For those who appreciate trigger warnings, the list is long with this one and the rampant manipulation and gaslighting is intense. As fairy tales are often cautionary and critical of power and obdurate establishment, Chokshi brandishes her literary blade at those who’s wealth becomes a fortress protecting them and trampling others underfoot. Even judicial systems can bend to their will, and Chokshi provides a startling character development on how those who want for nothing and know they hold power over others lose a feeling of empathy towards those in their grip. People are playthings or pawns, and someone with a vast imagination and expertise at narratives can construct entire realities for the sake of manipulating others to serve them. As Aunt Hippolyta, also named Tati (a woman rumored to have witchcraft-like powers but is reduced to serving Indigo and the estate not unlike her namesake from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream who symbolizes the repressed power of women) warns ‘people like her can remake reality as they so wish, but we are forced to live in the lands they leave behind.’ We see this all the time in the world, the wealthy living out fairytale fantasies globetrotting and wanting for nothing while others work themselves into the grave in order to uphold the systems providing wealth for the few and debt for the many. And fear is often used to keep them in line.
‘But she saw something in me. Something that turned her kiss into a knife that cut me free from the dark.’
For how often the term “dark fairy tale” gets thrown about to mixed results, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is one that truly deserves the claim. ‘Every fairy tale has blood flecked on its muzzle,’ Chokshi writes and this story has teeth and horror lurks everywhere for those brave enough to look. I especially enjoyed how much this story captures emotion, especially allowing the Bridegroom to express emotion (which I think is possibly why he is a sympathetic character who is ushered onto a quest to test him instead of some toxic character swallowing emotion away). As dark, eerie and threatening as any quest in these tales of wonder and possibility, and with glittering and gorgeous prose to propel us down the path, Chokshi weaves a tale that will seep into you and transfix you to keep turning the pages.
4.5/5
‘Too often the truth of a memory lives not in the mind but in the heart, in the subtle and sacred organization that makes up one's identity. But it is a tender place to reach, and I am wounded by touching it.’
February 27, 2023
↠ 5 stars
They had a seemingly happy marriage: he, a scholar of fantastical stories, and she, Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada, a wealthy heiress with a mysterious past. Despite their differences, the couple found solace with one another, and soon, a bargain was struck in exchange for love – that the scholar could have her heart, provided he never inquire into her past. For a time, there was harmony, but when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is on her deathbed, the couple return to the place where her story began, the House of Dreams. Within the manors walls, winding staircases, and dusty rooms, lie plenty of secrets far too seductive for the bridegroom to resist. As the house reveals the past of another girl, Azure, Indigo’s childhood friend long gone, he is willing to search between both reality and fantasy to learn the truth about his bride's past, even at the expense of their binding promise.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a luscious gothic feast, interlaced with fairytales, myth, and the treacherous secrets of a marriage. Wandering the halls of the crumbling House of Dreams, Chokshi spins her tale, interweaving fairy tales into the central narrative amidst broken promises and childhood dreams. Testament to everything I love about the gothic, this novel delivers a startling atmosphere, set around a crumbling manor and its ability to suspend the past. Chokshi absolutely dazzles, with poetic prose and the kind of fairytale spinning only she could bring to fruition. Everything inside me yearned to read this exquisite gothic debut from the moment it was announced, to step inside the House of Dreams and deconstruct the secrets hidden within its winding halls. The experience reading this was all the more mesmerizing, as I fell into Chokshi’s labyrinth of mystery, led deeper between the past of the house by Azure’s perspective, and the present day, with the bridegroom's suspicions. There was quite the unsettling back and forth with these two, aided by the different tones employed – the shift from Azure’s childhood wonder, to the unfortunate realization that happened on both sides. I still can't wrap my head around how beautifully written this novel is. Lush, dreamy writing is certainly in Roshani’s wheelhouse, and this is my favorite of hers thus far. This book twisted my expectations up in knots until right at the very end and each betrayal and exposed truth scored a little deeper. Infused with a kernel of romance, Roshani Chokshi breathes life into this resplendent and tragic gothic story. The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is everything I could possibly wish for in a gothic novel, and the way it slowly approaches the final act will leave you breathless in its downfall.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review
Trigger warnings: blood, death, violence, murder
They had a seemingly happy marriage: he, a scholar of fantastical stories, and she, Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada, a wealthy heiress with a mysterious past. Despite their differences, the couple found solace with one another, and soon, a bargain was struck in exchange for love – that the scholar could have her heart, provided he never inquire into her past. For a time, there was harmony, but when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is on her deathbed, the couple return to the place where her story began, the House of Dreams. Within the manors walls, winding staircases, and dusty rooms, lie plenty of secrets far too seductive for the bridegroom to resist. As the house reveals the past of another girl, Azure, Indigo’s childhood friend long gone, he is willing to search between both reality and fantasy to learn the truth about his bride's past, even at the expense of their binding promise.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a luscious gothic feast, interlaced with fairytales, myth, and the treacherous secrets of a marriage. Wandering the halls of the crumbling House of Dreams, Chokshi spins her tale, interweaving fairy tales into the central narrative amidst broken promises and childhood dreams. Testament to everything I love about the gothic, this novel delivers a startling atmosphere, set around a crumbling manor and its ability to suspend the past. Chokshi absolutely dazzles, with poetic prose and the kind of fairytale spinning only she could bring to fruition. Everything inside me yearned to read this exquisite gothic debut from the moment it was announced, to step inside the House of Dreams and deconstruct the secrets hidden within its winding halls. The experience reading this was all the more mesmerizing, as I fell into Chokshi’s labyrinth of mystery, led deeper between the past of the house by Azure’s perspective, and the present day, with the bridegroom's suspicions. There was quite the unsettling back and forth with these two, aided by the different tones employed – the shift from Azure’s childhood wonder, to the unfortunate realization that happened on both sides. I still can't wrap my head around how beautifully written this novel is. Lush, dreamy writing is certainly in Roshani’s wheelhouse, and this is my favorite of hers thus far. This book twisted my expectations up in knots until right at the very end and each betrayal and exposed truth scored a little deeper. Infused with a kernel of romance, Roshani Chokshi breathes life into this resplendent and tragic gothic story. The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is everything I could possibly wish for in a gothic novel, and the way it slowly approaches the final act will leave you breathless in its downfall.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review
Trigger warnings: blood, death, violence, murder
Read
February 11, 20232/11/2022
Here's where I'll be for Flower Bride tour!
Atlanta 2/13
NYC 2/14
Nashville 2/15
Novel Neighbor (VIRTUAL) 2/16
Boston 2/17
Anderson's Bookstore (VIRTUAL) 2/18
Pre-order art prints are available from all the stores except Little Shop of Stories in ATL as we are sold out. I'm very excited to share this story with you and meet you on the road! REGISTER FOR EVENTS HERE
Pre-Order Artwork!
10/8/2022
I wrote this story because I needed it.
Fairytales and myths are vital to our existence. They seek to explain the unexplainable. They offer succor. Hope. Horror. They assure us that there are a thousand paths through the woods. This is one of those paths.
I've described The Last Tale of The Flower Bride as a crooked fairytale wearing the skin of a thriller, but it is also a love letter to stories. I think it's a romance between two people. I think it's also a reconciliation of the monsters folded within ourselves. I think it's the best thing I've written so far, and for those of you who need this story too, I hope it finds you.
Here's where I'll be for Flower Bride tour!
Atlanta 2/13
NYC 2/14
Nashville 2/15
Novel Neighbor (VIRTUAL) 2/16
Boston 2/17
Anderson's Bookstore (VIRTUAL) 2/18
Pre-order art prints are available from all the stores except Little Shop of Stories in ATL as we are sold out. I'm very excited to share this story with you and meet you on the road! REGISTER FOR EVENTS HERE
Pre-Order Artwork!
10/8/2022
I wrote this story because I needed it.
Fairytales and myths are vital to our existence. They seek to explain the unexplainable. They offer succor. Hope. Horror. They assure us that there are a thousand paths through the woods. This is one of those paths.
I've described The Last Tale of The Flower Bride as a crooked fairytale wearing the skin of a thriller, but it is also a love letter to stories. I think it's a romance between two people. I think it's also a reconciliation of the monsters folded within ourselves. I think it's the best thing I've written so far, and for those of you who need this story too, I hope it finds you.
January 14, 2024
Wish the flower bride was more evil and problematic tbh, but the ending of the book took an interesting turn!
October 19, 2023
ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley
first and foremost, i will for sure say i think this is a book that you would benefit from going in to without knowing anything (trigger and content warnings below if you do need/want) - so maybe even pass on reading this next paragraph all together until you have finished. also, i believe the synopsis is vague and mysterious for a reason, and i opened these pages expecting roshani to weave me an adult dark fairytale - which she totally did - but this book is so much more than that.
this is a beautiful and lush atmospheric story, with a gothic spooky house setting, all centered around the mystery that is the fae and three people who have been searching their whole lives for them. but the heart of this story is about grief, abuse, neglect, and how the world can be so extra unfair to children that they are forced to find and create their own places in magical worlds to feel safe, loved, and be able to escape. This book was very hard to read at times, and roshani is an expert at blending dark whimsy and dark reality together flawlessly. i could not put this book down, because i needed to know more and more answers each time one was unlocked! but also while i was having that intense feeling of seeing scenes play out while you are watching with your hands kind of covering your eyes. you don't want to know, but you need to know. plus roshani’s writing is such a tier above everything, this story is filled with very intense and juxtaposing feelings. ahhh, i feel like i have already said too much - but i love all roshani’s stories and i am always so proud of her and her voice - i hope the world loves this story and all the well crafted and very important layers.
oh and lastly, some early reviews are saying this is a bluebeard retelling, but i am not familiar with that story, i am sorry! but she also pulls from so many other stories and myths (this really is also a love letter to dark and cruel and beloved tales), one being another brothers grimm story that i was somewhat familiar with, and it really added another dark and scary layer that really helped emphasize the scariest monsters of all time will always be humans.
tw/cw: loss of a loved one, extreme nightmares, a lot of blood depiction + drawing blood, gore, abuse, domestic abuse, child abuse, child neglect, child abandonment, gaslighting, animal deaths, human deaths, murder, mention of child death, kind of brief mentions of dieting/eating a very specific way, bullying, cheating, codependency, suicidal ideation and thoughts, drugging, pedophilia (very weird things being said, the child being scared/constant state of fear at home, creepy and unsettling vibes every scene with intention for more, and then at 17 years old unwanted touching/brushing past + maybe more/set up to be more… this is a hard trigger warning, but it is a constant thing in the book that is very hard to read so please use caution)
blog | instagram | youtube | kofi | spotify | amazon
first and foremost, i will for sure say i think this is a book that you would benefit from going in to without knowing anything (trigger and content warnings below if you do need/want) - so maybe even pass on reading this next paragraph all together until you have finished. also, i believe the synopsis is vague and mysterious for a reason, and i opened these pages expecting roshani to weave me an adult dark fairytale - which she totally did - but this book is so much more than that.
“Who were we when not cleaved to each other?”
this is a beautiful and lush atmospheric story, with a gothic spooky house setting, all centered around the mystery that is the fae and three people who have been searching their whole lives for them. but the heart of this story is about grief, abuse, neglect, and how the world can be so extra unfair to children that they are forced to find and create their own places in magical worlds to feel safe, loved, and be able to escape. This book was very hard to read at times, and roshani is an expert at blending dark whimsy and dark reality together flawlessly. i could not put this book down, because i needed to know more and more answers each time one was unlocked! but also while i was having that intense feeling of seeing scenes play out while you are watching with your hands kind of covering your eyes. you don't want to know, but you need to know. plus roshani’s writing is such a tier above everything, this story is filled with very intense and juxtaposing feelings. ahhh, i feel like i have already said too much - but i love all roshani’s stories and i am always so proud of her and her voice - i hope the world loves this story and all the well crafted and very important layers.
oh and lastly, some early reviews are saying this is a bluebeard retelling, but i am not familiar with that story, i am sorry! but she also pulls from so many other stories and myths (this really is also a love letter to dark and cruel and beloved tales), one being another brothers grimm story that i was somewhat familiar with, and it really added another dark and scary layer that really helped emphasize the scariest monsters of all time will always be humans.
tw/cw: loss of a loved one, extreme nightmares, a lot of blood depiction + drawing blood, gore, abuse, domestic abuse, child abuse, child neglect, child abandonment, gaslighting, animal deaths, human deaths, murder, mention of child death, kind of brief mentions of dieting/eating a very specific way, bullying, cheating, codependency, suicidal ideation and thoughts, drugging, pedophilia (very weird things being said, the child being scared/constant state of fear at home, creepy and unsettling vibes every scene with intention for more, and then at 17 years old unwanted touching/brushing past + maybe more/set up to be more… this is a hard trigger warning, but it is a constant thing in the book that is very hard to read so please use caution)
blog | instagram | youtube | kofi | spotify | amazon
February 13, 2023
In a Nutshell: Disappointed! There’s a plot in here somewhere, but it’s tough to locate it amid the extensive purple prose. Liked a few of the writing flourishes, but not the book.
Story Synopsis:
Where the book worked for me:
😍 The author has a wonderful knowledge of fairy tales and lore, and her vocabulary is excellent.
😍 The book represents toxic friendship quite well. This doesn’t make the characters easy to like, but their motives comes out decently.
😍 The cover is a treat to the eyes! (Both covers actually: I couldn’t decide which cover I liked better: the US edition or the UK one.)
Where the book left me with mixed feelings:
😐 As a Gothic novel, the book needed to have an intriguing house, and it scores high on atmosphere with the House of Dreams, and even the Otherworld. Unfortunately, the house is used more like a background prop than as a character unto itself. It is personified but not utilised to its potential. What was the point of it? (The House kept reminding me of the delightful house from Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg. How I missed the same effect! This one felt forced in comparison.)
😐 The writing is quite beautiful. Many lines were striking. However, the ornateness of the flowery text bogs down the story as well as the pacing. There’s no balance between the two crucial elements of plot and prose.
😐 There is plenty of foreshadowing in the woman’s pov, which works at times but also irritates an equal number of times.
😐 The big reveal is easy to spot if you are paying attention. It is hinted at regularly. The ending was good, but as I had seen it coming, it was not as impactful for me as it could have been.
Where the book could have worked better for me:
😒 The plot begins with the idea that the bridegroom met Indigo when he was searching for a 13th century grimoire. The grimoire isn’t mentioned at all after the first chapter! Did he just forget about it?
😒 The couple meet, get attracted to each other, and marry within the first couple of chapters. This is one of the most rushed “romances” I have seen in fiction, especially as we don’t even know what X-factor brings the two of them together except that each finds the other attractive.
😒 Of the two character perspectives, the author was clearly more invested in one and the other served only as the handrail through which the preferred plot progressed upwards.
😒 The two first-person narratives don’t do the book any favour. The voice of both characters sounds the same, despite the difference in gender. At times, I even lost track of whether the bridegroom was speaking or the other character. (On a related note: the bridegroom’s pov is infused with so many emotions that it is tough to remember that we are hearing a man’s voice.)
😒 The writing is very slow (mainly because of the frivolous embellishments) and I had to force myself to continue. My head refused to co-operate and kept wandering outside the realms of the plot.
😒 Characters are exotic for the sake of it. We read a little about their different skin colour or their appearance, but their actual ethnic origin is never revealed. It's so tough to visualise characters when they are written like this.
😒 The author has a fondness for certain words and they pop up in the narrative time and again. This needn’t be a big word. Even something as simple as ‘lips’ gets a regular appearance.
(Quick Question: How many times can I tolerate characters rubbing their thumbs over another’s lips?
Answer: Zero.)
😒 There are plenty of references to fae elements in the plot, but we never know whether they were actual or just in the imagination of the characters. Quite a lot is left unsaid.
I had expected far more from this author because I have heard so much about her Aru Shah series, though I haven’t read her works yet. This is her debut adult fiction, so I am unsure if this had her typical writing style, or if she goofed up in her writing methodology in a quest to cater to her adult audience. Either way, I might still try her works in future, but will restrict myself to the children’s fantasy titles.
This one gets a no-no from me. However, if you are the kind of reader who loves lush prose even at the cost of a coherent plot, you will certainly want to give this a try. I hope you do. A majority of readers did love it. Will work if you are looking for a dark romance or a gothic fantasy. Won’t work as a mystery-thriller, as some readers have erroneously tagged it.
2 stars.
My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Last Tale of the Flower Bride”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this worked out so poorly.
———————————————
This would have been a DNF had it not been a buddy read with Srivalli. (Do check out her review too once she posts it.) It helped to have someone to push me to the finish line. Her feelings are pretty much the same as both of us expected a lot more from this reputed Indian author. Oh well! Maybe the next BR will bring us back on track, Sri. Fingers crossed! Don’t want a hat-trick of flops.
———————————————
Connect with me through:
My Blog | The StoryGraph | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
Story Synopsis:
A few years ago, an unnamed man married Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada, a beautiful, wealthy and mysterious woman. Theirs was a quick relationship, with Indigo readily giving him her love on just one condition – that he never pry into her past.
When Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is on her deathbed, the couple rush to her childhood home, known as the House of Dreams. Within this huge mansion lie plenty of secrets, and the man finds himself unable to resist the urge to know the secrets of his bride. Will his curiosity end up destroying his marriage, or his own life?
The story comes to us in the first person perspective of two characters, one of whom is the unnamed man who is referred to as ‘The Bridegroom’.
Where the book worked for me:
😍 The author has a wonderful knowledge of fairy tales and lore, and her vocabulary is excellent.
😍 The book represents toxic friendship quite well. This doesn’t make the characters easy to like, but their motives comes out decently.
😍 The cover is a treat to the eyes! (Both covers actually: I couldn’t decide which cover I liked better: the US edition or the UK one.)
Where the book left me with mixed feelings:
😐 As a Gothic novel, the book needed to have an intriguing house, and it scores high on atmosphere with the House of Dreams, and even the Otherworld. Unfortunately, the house is used more like a background prop than as a character unto itself. It is personified but not utilised to its potential. What was the point of it? (The House kept reminding me of the delightful house from Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg. How I missed the same effect! This one felt forced in comparison.)
😐 The writing is quite beautiful. Many lines were striking. However, the ornateness of the flowery text bogs down the story as well as the pacing. There’s no balance between the two crucial elements of plot and prose.
😐 There is plenty of foreshadowing in the woman’s pov, which works at times but also irritates an equal number of times.
😐 The big reveal is easy to spot if you are paying attention. It is hinted at regularly. The ending was good, but as I had seen it coming, it was not as impactful for me as it could have been.
Where the book could have worked better for me:
😒 The plot begins with the idea that the bridegroom met Indigo when he was searching for a 13th century grimoire. The grimoire isn’t mentioned at all after the first chapter! Did he just forget about it?
😒 The couple meet, get attracted to each other, and marry within the first couple of chapters. This is one of the most rushed “romances” I have seen in fiction, especially as we don’t even know what X-factor brings the two of them together except that each finds the other attractive.
😒 Of the two character perspectives, the author was clearly more invested in one and the other served only as the handrail through which the preferred plot progressed upwards.
😒 The two first-person narratives don’t do the book any favour. The voice of both characters sounds the same, despite the difference in gender. At times, I even lost track of whether the bridegroom was speaking or the other character. (On a related note: the bridegroom’s pov is infused with so many emotions that it is tough to remember that we are hearing a man’s voice.)
😒 The writing is very slow (mainly because of the frivolous embellishments) and I had to force myself to continue. My head refused to co-operate and kept wandering outside the realms of the plot.
😒 Characters are exotic for the sake of it. We read a little about their different skin colour or their appearance, but their actual ethnic origin is never revealed. It's so tough to visualise characters when they are written like this.
😒 The author has a fondness for certain words and they pop up in the narrative time and again. This needn’t be a big word. Even something as simple as ‘lips’ gets a regular appearance.
(Quick Question: How many times can I tolerate characters rubbing their thumbs over another’s lips?
Answer: Zero.)
😒 There are plenty of references to fae elements in the plot, but we never know whether they were actual or just in the imagination of the characters. Quite a lot is left unsaid.
I had expected far more from this author because I have heard so much about her Aru Shah series, though I haven’t read her works yet. This is her debut adult fiction, so I am unsure if this had her typical writing style, or if she goofed up in her writing methodology in a quest to cater to her adult audience. Either way, I might still try her works in future, but will restrict myself to the children’s fantasy titles.
This one gets a no-no from me. However, if you are the kind of reader who loves lush prose even at the cost of a coherent plot, you will certainly want to give this a try. I hope you do. A majority of readers did love it. Will work if you are looking for a dark romance or a gothic fantasy. Won’t work as a mystery-thriller, as some readers have erroneously tagged it.
2 stars.
My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Last Tale of the Flower Bride”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this worked out so poorly.
———————————————
This would have been a DNF had it not been a buddy read with Srivalli. (Do check out her review too once she posts it.) It helped to have someone to push me to the finish line. Her feelings are pretty much the same as both of us expected a lot more from this reputed Indian author. Oh well! Maybe the next BR will bring us back on track, Sri. Fingers crossed! Don’t want a hat-trick of flops.
———————————————
Connect with me through:
My Blog | The StoryGraph | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
September 28, 2023
You never forget the moment when beauty turns to horror.
I can't believe a book like this exists and I was lucky enough to cross paths with it.
The Last Tale of The Flower Bride is a deliciously gothic fairytale that seems full of magic, but it's filled with secrets and damaged people, instead.
Think Crimson Peak mixed with Encanto and add to it a toxic friendship and a beautiful writing.
This is my first time reading Chokshi (I tried reading The Gilded Wolves a couple years ago but couldn't get into it - might revise that, actually), and I was enchanted by her talent.
Her writing is pure poetry wrapped up in a coat made of broken dreams and shattered promises; Every line is so impactful, so whimsical I found myself reading passages more than once because I felt like they were uprooted directly from the part of my soul that holds all those lyrical thoughts I can never put into words.
I fell head over heels in love with the armospheric way people, places and situations are described, and I loved how the story is peppered with dark and folkloric tales, some old and known, some new and bone-chilling.
I really can't say much about the plot, because, honestly, this is a story you'll want to savor slowly, by yourself, while rain is pouring outside and your heart is open to strangeness.
What I can say, though, is that this is not a book for everyone; it's confusing, at times, spooky without being scary, with a purple prose that only works in books like this one and that not all readers appreciate.
In case you decide it's a novel you'll want in your collection, you've got to be ready to believe everything you read but also treat it with a grain of salt.
But trust me, you won't regret it and will enjoy every minute you'll spend in its company.
many thanks to NetGalley, Hodder & Stoughton and the lovely Roshani Chokshi for the ARC and the opportunity.
_________
edit december 2022: i can't stop thinking about this book. it made me fall THAT hard.
_________
february 2023: Late as always, but HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY TO THIS GOTHIC BEAUTY!
June 24, 2024
4.5 stars I think? Higher??? Idk this was incredible and I’m exhausted because it’s after 3am because I couldn’t stop reading this
July 25, 2022
haunting, sumptuous, poetic, rich, vicious, upsetting, strangely but profoundly romantic, fairy tale in the old bad sense, gothic in the new subversive sense. absolutely loved it.
July 19, 2023
”Myths are but lies breathed through silver.” -C.S. Lewis
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is the type of book that I go koo koo over. I want to collect all the editions of it (ebook, hardcover, and audiobook, check check check), hoard all the special editions and cover art, and make it my entire personality. Couple that with the fact that Roshani Chokshi is a national treasure and we should protect her at all costs, I can safely say that this book will be in my Top 10 of 2023 round up. It’s gorgeous prose, lush atmosphere, and gothic horror elements are cream of the crop, and each time I was able to listen to the audiobook or open the ebook felt like an escape, even though it isn’t a story I’d want to physically be drawn into. ;)
You warned me that knowing your secret would destroy us.
At first, it sat in our marriage like a blue-lipped ghost, hardly noticeable until a trick of the light drew it into focus. But you could always tell the days when it gnawed at my thoughts. You tried to comfort me. You stroked my face and curled my fingers to your heart.
You said: “If you pry, you’ll destroy our marriage.”
But oh, my love, you lied.
The less you know going into this story the better, and while I did have it mostly sorted before the reveal, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story. In fact, I feel like it added an element of suspense, building up to the climax to see if I was right and the journey of how we got there. There are many dark elements to this book, and I encourage you to check out trigger warnings before diving in if you need to, but otherwise, definitely go in blind. If you enjoy sensual and sumptuous tales that straddle the line of magical and grounded, this should be at the top of your TBR, and consider the audiobook if you enjoy a good male narrator. *swoons in Steve West*
*Many thanks to the publisher and LibroFM for my ALC and e-galley.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is the type of book that I go koo koo over. I want to collect all the editions of it (ebook, hardcover, and audiobook, check check check), hoard all the special editions and cover art, and make it my entire personality. Couple that with the fact that Roshani Chokshi is a national treasure and we should protect her at all costs, I can safely say that this book will be in my Top 10 of 2023 round up. It’s gorgeous prose, lush atmosphere, and gothic horror elements are cream of the crop, and each time I was able to listen to the audiobook or open the ebook felt like an escape, even though it isn’t a story I’d want to physically be drawn into. ;)
You warned me that knowing your secret would destroy us.
At first, it sat in our marriage like a blue-lipped ghost, hardly noticeable until a trick of the light drew it into focus. But you could always tell the days when it gnawed at my thoughts. You tried to comfort me. You stroked my face and curled my fingers to your heart.
You said: “If you pry, you’ll destroy our marriage.”
But oh, my love, you lied.
The less you know going into this story the better, and while I did have it mostly sorted before the reveal, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story. In fact, I feel like it added an element of suspense, building up to the climax to see if I was right and the journey of how we got there. There are many dark elements to this book, and I encourage you to check out trigger warnings before diving in if you need to, but otherwise, definitely go in blind. If you enjoy sensual and sumptuous tales that straddle the line of magical and grounded, this should be at the top of your TBR, and consider the audiobook if you enjoy a good male narrator. *swoons in Steve West*
*Many thanks to the publisher and LibroFM for my ALC and e-galley.
December 23, 2022
This is darkly gothic, dreamlike and shimmering surreal storytelling from Roshani Choksi, with exquisitely atmospheric lyrical prose, infused with the chilling haunting horror of unsettling fairytales. 'The Bridegroom' falls into an all consuming love for Indigo Maxwell-Castenada, an heiress, happy ever afters beckon with their marriage, although there is a condition, he must never probe into her past, but like all fairytales, despite the dangers, he is going to do so. After learning that her estranged aunt is dying, the couple travel to Indigo's home as a child, The House of Dreams, a place that knows Indigo's secrets, her friendship with Azure and Azure's strange disappearance. It becomes difficult to discern the reality through the billowing haze of the fae and deception.
We learn of the nature of Indigo's inseparable relationship with Azure in this narrative of horror, obsession, complicated feelings and emotions, toxic friendships, marriage, loss, the search for truth, and secrets, there can be much darker fairytale overtones beneath what appears on the surface. This is a darkly enchanting, vibrant, hypnotic and beautiful read, the skilful slow build up of foreboding, the magic and intertwining fairytales, ensure that the reader is gripped by a novel whose prime focus is the developing dynamics of the relationship between Azure and Indigo. A truly memorable book! Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
We learn of the nature of Indigo's inseparable relationship with Azure in this narrative of horror, obsession, complicated feelings and emotions, toxic friendships, marriage, loss, the search for truth, and secrets, there can be much darker fairytale overtones beneath what appears on the surface. This is a darkly enchanting, vibrant, hypnotic and beautiful read, the skilful slow build up of foreboding, the magic and intertwining fairytales, ensure that the reader is gripped by a novel whose prime focus is the developing dynamics of the relationship between Azure and Indigo. A truly memorable book! Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
February 18, 2023
I love the color purple. Just not when it comes to prose.
Roshani Chokshi’s first adult novel, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, is richly steeped in fairy tales and myths. It’s the story of heiress Indigo Maxwell-Castenada, as revealed through the eyes of her husband, known simply as The Bridegroom, and her childhood friend, Azure. The narrative alternates between the present and the past, allowing both The Bridegroom and Azure to illuminate the true nature of their relationship with Indigo while within the walls of her eerie childhood home, the House of Dreams.
At its best, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a somewhat enthralling exploration of the mystical power of fairy tales and the spell they cast on the reader. And to be fair, Chokshi has written the novel in a style that is appropriately lush and surreal, creating an atmospheric reading experience that fuzzes dream and reality.
But her prose is so glaringly purple that it buries the story. It muddles the plot and makes it difficult to discern what each character is attempting to accomplish. And even though I was curious enough to see the novel through to its end, trudging my way through the prose left me exhausted.
Really, hidden beneath all the florid writing of The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, there is a fantastic story. I know this because the pull of it is why I continued to read the novel. But sadly, through the veil of the purple prose, I just couldn’t see it – at least not clearly enough to give a full recommendation.
My sincerest appreciation to Roshani Chokshi, William Morrow, and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy. All opinions included herein are my own.
Roshani Chokshi’s first adult novel, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, is richly steeped in fairy tales and myths. It’s the story of heiress Indigo Maxwell-Castenada, as revealed through the eyes of her husband, known simply as The Bridegroom, and her childhood friend, Azure. The narrative alternates between the present and the past, allowing both The Bridegroom and Azure to illuminate the true nature of their relationship with Indigo while within the walls of her eerie childhood home, the House of Dreams.
At its best, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a somewhat enthralling exploration of the mystical power of fairy tales and the spell they cast on the reader. And to be fair, Chokshi has written the novel in a style that is appropriately lush and surreal, creating an atmospheric reading experience that fuzzes dream and reality.
But her prose is so glaringly purple that it buries the story. It muddles the plot and makes it difficult to discern what each character is attempting to accomplish. And even though I was curious enough to see the novel through to its end, trudging my way through the prose left me exhausted.
Really, hidden beneath all the florid writing of The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, there is a fantastic story. I know this because the pull of it is why I continued to read the novel. But sadly, through the veil of the purple prose, I just couldn’t see it – at least not clearly enough to give a full recommendation.
My sincerest appreciation to Roshani Chokshi, William Morrow, and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy. All opinions included herein are my own.
November 8, 2022
it kinda blows my mind how a book about an unhinged, toxic, obsessive girlhood friendship with sapphic undertones is being sold as a 'darkly romantic' story about a troubled marriage instead. trust me when i say the blurb is so misleading - there's barely any romance here and the marriage with all its secrets is the least interesting part of this book.
i think if the marketing was more accurate and i went in with the right expectations, i would've appreciated the book more. because there's a lot to like here - the writing is incredibly atmospheric with lovingly rendered gothic and dark fairytale vibes. i enjoyed the coming-of-age childhood friendship flashbacks in which the two girls play games that blur the lines between fantasy and reality, it often reminded me of bridge to terabithia. their dangerously codependent relationship and collective spiral into delusion was a fascinating train wreck to witness.
however, while the writing style is beautiful at times, it's equally annoying and hilariously melodramatic at times. i'd be highlighting lines in one chapter and rolling my eyes in another. also, the husband's chapters were so frustrating - his constant musings on fairytales got old after a time and his marriage with indigo didn't make me feel anything. honestly, his character exists just to drive the plot forward which means he doesn't have much of a personality - and since the plot builds up to an extremely predictable plot twist, his chapters weren't that exciting to read. i wish this book was just about the girls instead (although i admit their characters could've had more depth).
despite my complaints though, i'd still recommend the last tale of the flower bride for what it gets right: the gothic fairytale atmosphere and the dark, bittersweet coming-of-age tale.
ARC received from netgalley in exchange for an honest review
i think if the marketing was more accurate and i went in with the right expectations, i would've appreciated the book more. because there's a lot to like here - the writing is incredibly atmospheric with lovingly rendered gothic and dark fairytale vibes. i enjoyed the coming-of-age childhood friendship flashbacks in which the two girls play games that blur the lines between fantasy and reality, it often reminded me of bridge to terabithia. their dangerously codependent relationship and collective spiral into delusion was a fascinating train wreck to witness.
however, while the writing style is beautiful at times, it's equally annoying and hilariously melodramatic at times. i'd be highlighting lines in one chapter and rolling my eyes in another. also, the husband's chapters were so frustrating - his constant musings on fairytales got old after a time and his marriage with indigo didn't make me feel anything. honestly, his character exists just to drive the plot forward which means he doesn't have much of a personality - and since the plot builds up to an extremely predictable plot twist, his chapters weren't that exciting to read. i wish this book was just about the girls instead (although i admit their characters could've had more depth).
despite my complaints though, i'd still recommend the last tale of the flower bride for what it gets right: the gothic fairytale atmosphere and the dark, bittersweet coming-of-age tale.
ARC received from netgalley in exchange for an honest review
December 11, 2022
2**
Sadly this book really missed the mark with me- but I did finish it.
This book enthralled me with its writing- the descriptions were enchanting and enthralling, and I loved all the nods to mythology as well as the weaving of different folk tales and fairy tales from various parts of the world. The authors descriptions painted vivid pictures and really sparked up the imagination.
Sadly, the beautiful writing was not enough to to capture my attention and save this book.
This was an incredibly slow-moving book, and while reading this book I felt incredibly detached from the characters, meaning that my interest nor potential care for them was ever sparked.
I also found thy the relationship between the main male/female was rushed and established too quickly- despite this clearly not being a main point of the book, I would’ve loved to know more about how their relationship progressed.
I should also mention that this book has a MASSIVE warning for TOXICITY. This made it an uncomfortable read at times, which probably added to my displeasure of reading it this book.
Overall, disappointingly, the lyrical descriptions of magic, beauty and fae were not enough to save this book for me.
Thank you to NetGalley for the E-Arc!
Sadly this book really missed the mark with me- but I did finish it.
This book enthralled me with its writing- the descriptions were enchanting and enthralling, and I loved all the nods to mythology as well as the weaving of different folk tales and fairy tales from various parts of the world. The authors descriptions painted vivid pictures and really sparked up the imagination.
Sadly, the beautiful writing was not enough to to capture my attention and save this book.
This was an incredibly slow-moving book, and while reading this book I felt incredibly detached from the characters, meaning that my interest nor potential care for them was ever sparked.
I also found thy the relationship between the main male/female was rushed and established too quickly- despite this clearly not being a main point of the book, I would’ve loved to know more about how their relationship progressed.
I should also mention that this book has a MASSIVE warning for TOXICITY. This made it an uncomfortable read at times, which probably added to my displeasure of reading it this book.
Overall, disappointingly, the lyrical descriptions of magic, beauty and fae were not enough to save this book for me.
Thank you to NetGalley for the E-Arc!
May 21, 2024
Regards to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for providing me an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Honestly, this is a weird one because I intensely dislike it, but at the same time, it inspires within me a deep sense of admiration because a rare beauty transposes within the prose.
We follow a double POV, one in the present and one in the past, and both evolve around a mysterious and beautiful woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. In the present, we follow the Bridegroom, a young historian who married Indigo, and vowed to never pry into her past. In parallel, we follow Indigo and her best friend when they were teenagers, all of this before the best friend's mysterious disappearance.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is pitched as a gothic fantasy, but for me, it is more like a thriller. The writing is incredibly atmospheric, and the prose breathtakingly gorgeous. The plot twist had me shocked (maybe I am just stupid, but I was left there, gaping). However, I find little substance in the story. I dislike every character intensely, and to be honest, each character feels like an archetype with no complexity. The chemistry between the Bridegroom and Indigo is non-existent. But for some reason, this book has a lot of charm, maybe because it reflects the author's ambitions and talents. Roshani Chokshi is an incredibly sensible author, and aI truly wish that she had done more work on her plot rather than betting everything on her flowery prose, because we all know that a fantasy needs a plot.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend it if you are in for a fantasy, or even a thriller for that matters, but if you want a taste of a breathtaking and langourous prose in a gothic setting, you should give this a try.
Honestly, this is a weird one because I intensely dislike it, but at the same time, it inspires within me a deep sense of admiration because a rare beauty transposes within the prose.
We follow a double POV, one in the present and one in the past, and both evolve around a mysterious and beautiful woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. In the present, we follow the Bridegroom, a young historian who married Indigo, and vowed to never pry into her past. In parallel, we follow Indigo and her best friend when they were teenagers, all of this before the best friend's mysterious disappearance.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is pitched as a gothic fantasy, but for me, it is more like a thriller. The writing is incredibly atmospheric, and the prose breathtakingly gorgeous. The plot twist had me shocked (maybe I am just stupid, but I was left there, gaping). However, I find little substance in the story. I dislike every character intensely, and to be honest, each character feels like an archetype with no complexity. The chemistry between the Bridegroom and Indigo is non-existent. But for some reason, this book has a lot of charm, maybe because it reflects the author's ambitions and talents. Roshani Chokshi is an incredibly sensible author, and aI truly wish that she had done more work on her plot rather than betting everything on her flowery prose, because we all know that a fantasy needs a plot.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend it if you are in for a fantasy, or even a thriller for that matters, but if you want a taste of a breathtaking and langourous prose in a gothic setting, you should give this a try.
February 10, 2024
this was not at all what I expected, in a good way. the writing was STUNNING
February 18, 2023
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a gothic fairy tale of secrets, stories, risk, and ruin.
A tale of damaged souls and broken hearts, it begins as all fairy tales do with “Once upon a time…”
How fitting that author Roshani Chokshi’s lyrical prose is nothing short of enchanting.
Her storytelling weaves a spell upon the reader, leaving us feeling as if we are either dreaming or intoxicated, or perhaps a bit of both.
Here we’ll find stories within stories: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Catskin, The Red Shoes, The Robber Bridegroom, and even Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and Dvorak’s mermaid opera Rusalka — all taking root in ancient folklore.
Chokshi liberally sprinkles breadcrumbs throughout her telling of the many recurring symbols, imagery, and motifs of traditional fairy tales: abusive parents, princesses, keys, apples, rings, glass houses, towers, forests, jewels, and riches.
And of course, what would a fairy tale be without imparting some kind of moral message or teaching? Good triumphs over evil; truth prevails over lies; generosity and kindness are rewarded; and, obstacles are overcome by courage, ingenuity, and love.
"In the end, a fairy tale is nothing more than a sense of hope."
Escape to the gothic fairy realm of The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, a magical Otherworld of possibility that offers hope of release from poverty, maltreatment, loneliness, and grief — in short, a happy ending.
But, enter at your own peril. You have been warned: you, too, may find yourself bewitched by this magical tale.
A tale of damaged souls and broken hearts, it begins as all fairy tales do with “Once upon a time…”
How fitting that author Roshani Chokshi’s lyrical prose is nothing short of enchanting.
Her storytelling weaves a spell upon the reader, leaving us feeling as if we are either dreaming or intoxicated, or perhaps a bit of both.
Here we’ll find stories within stories: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Catskin, The Red Shoes, The Robber Bridegroom, and even Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and Dvorak’s mermaid opera Rusalka — all taking root in ancient folklore.
Chokshi liberally sprinkles breadcrumbs throughout her telling of the many recurring symbols, imagery, and motifs of traditional fairy tales: abusive parents, princesses, keys, apples, rings, glass houses, towers, forests, jewels, and riches.
And of course, what would a fairy tale be without imparting some kind of moral message or teaching? Good triumphs over evil; truth prevails over lies; generosity and kindness are rewarded; and, obstacles are overcome by courage, ingenuity, and love.
"In the end, a fairy tale is nothing more than a sense of hope."
Escape to the gothic fairy realm of The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, a magical Otherworld of possibility that offers hope of release from poverty, maltreatment, loneliness, and grief — in short, a happy ending.
But, enter at your own peril. You have been warned: you, too, may find yourself bewitched by this magical tale.
November 27, 2022
the angela carter girlies are shameless - i think every book that has cited the bloody chamber as influence has done the rubies/slit throat metaphor word for word. which is insane because who are you writing for if not your fellow angela carter girlies?
i hesitate to call this a book - it is a meaningless word salad, void of any substance and too scrambled for any actual style. it is a transcription of a moodboard generated at random from a pinterest algorithm. there is no defining character in either of the povs, both of whom speak in the same tumblr efflorescence (it is impossible to tell that one of them is meant to be a man). it is neural network buzzwords for beauty all the way through. there are no cohesions of metaphor or theme, no particular stories that are meant to guide or resonate here (not even really bluebeard despite the big house / secrets / dark hair catching blue light of it all) (which is like, fine. genderswitched bluebeard was deeply stupid as a premise and roshani chokshi has no interesting thoughts on gender or sexuality that would enliven it - 'genderswitched bluebeard but the secret in the closet is a Toxic Female Friendship' has been making me scream out my own ass since i heard the pitch) - it's apples for the sake of apples, honeycomb because that seems more fey than candy, whatever image would suit the moment and an assumption that the audience will generate beauty and meaning independently. take the third to last sentence in the book, which will offer no spoilers in transcription: "eventually what was once softened to a palimpsest of lost words and snowfall, starlings and sparrow wings and blue ink." okay? and to be clear, i am not 'confused', in that i know what she intends by each of these images. none of them land with any force because they are meaningless, depthless. they are fragments on a flat surface. they are the author clicking through a slide reel of images she met on vacation.
inasmuch as this reminds me of anything it reminds me of olde schoole francesca lia block (post weetzie bat, circa i was a teenage fairy, when she was like oh there is nothing finer than to have sugar-spun lips and try to enter fairyland by developing an eating disorder), but though flb was never super deep she was doing wacky surface level style things and had... something resembling an imagination, whereas what roshani chokshi has is a luxury hotel catalogue and a thesaurus.
i love beauty for its own sake. i love fairytale reimaginings. i love bluebeard. i even loved roshani chokshi's short story about scheherazade, once, before she spent a decade not being edited. this is unsalvageable.
i hesitate to call this a book - it is a meaningless word salad, void of any substance and too scrambled for any actual style. it is a transcription of a moodboard generated at random from a pinterest algorithm. there is no defining character in either of the povs, both of whom speak in the same tumblr efflorescence (it is impossible to tell that one of them is meant to be a man). it is neural network buzzwords for beauty all the way through. there are no cohesions of metaphor or theme, no particular stories that are meant to guide or resonate here (not even really bluebeard despite the big house / secrets / dark hair catching blue light of it all) (which is like, fine. genderswitched bluebeard was deeply stupid as a premise and roshani chokshi has no interesting thoughts on gender or sexuality that would enliven it - 'genderswitched bluebeard but the secret in the closet is a Toxic Female Friendship' has been making me scream out my own ass since i heard the pitch) - it's apples for the sake of apples, honeycomb because that seems more fey than candy, whatever image would suit the moment and an assumption that the audience will generate beauty and meaning independently. take the third to last sentence in the book, which will offer no spoilers in transcription: "eventually what was once softened to a palimpsest of lost words and snowfall, starlings and sparrow wings and blue ink." okay? and to be clear, i am not 'confused', in that i know what she intends by each of these images. none of them land with any force because they are meaningless, depthless. they are fragments on a flat surface. they are the author clicking through a slide reel of images she met on vacation.
inasmuch as this reminds me of anything it reminds me of olde schoole francesca lia block (post weetzie bat, circa i was a teenage fairy, when she was like oh there is nothing finer than to have sugar-spun lips and try to enter fairyland by developing an eating disorder), but though flb was never super deep she was doing wacky surface level style things and had... something resembling an imagination, whereas what roshani chokshi has is a luxury hotel catalogue and a thesaurus.
i love beauty for its own sake. i love fairytale reimaginings. i love bluebeard. i even loved roshani chokshi's short story about scheherazade, once, before she spent a decade not being edited. this is unsalvageable.
March 22, 2023
This is the kind of divisive, polarizing book that people will either love or hate. I can easily imagine someone writing a scathing critique of the overwrought prose, melodramatic dialogue, and ridiculously over-the-top narrative elements.
However, that someone is not me.
Reader, I loved this book. I first read it over two years ago, long before it was even announced to the public. I went into that early draft with no expectations at all, which is probably why I ended up enjoying it so much. In my opinion, marketing this as a fantasy novel was a mistake. This is a gothic thriller inspired by classic fairy tales and centered around two toxic, obsessive relationships: the marriage between an unnamed male narrator and an enigmatic heiress, and the friendship between said heiress and her childhood best friend, now mysteriously disappeared.
I think the main reason I enjoyed The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is its intertextual nature. Right off the bat, Chokshi makes it clear that she’s drawing from and referencing the work of other authors, from Angela Carter to Daphne du Maurier. Not only is the narrator a folklore researcher, he’s also obviously meant to be a gender-bent Bluebeard protagonist. The characters openly discuss fairy tales and mythology, playing with metafictional ideas and trying to incorporate elements from the stories they love into their lives. This isn’t always done gracefully—a lot of the time, the references feel heavy-handed and almost forced—but I enjoyed them nonetheless.
Ultimately, I think this was due to the fact that the author’s literary taste seems to overlap almost perfectly with mine. I too love analyzing folk tales, picking them apart to find common tropes and dynamics across different cultures. I, too, love gothic novels about terrible women and their not-quite-sapphic relationships. For the love of a good, thrilling, campy gothic, I’m even willing to put up with a heavy dose of purple prose and melodrama. If anything, I’m disappointed this book didn’t lean even further into its premise: I would have loved a more thorough exploration of the implications of a gender bent Bluebeard retelling, or a deconstruction of the class, gender, and colonial foundations of the gothic genre. But I guess Chokshi was never interested in any of this. She wanted to write a fun, commercial novel based on her favorite classics, with a compelling villain and a love story you could root for.
Which is partly why this book doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny: gothic novels and cautionary tales about murderous husbands don’t usually lend themselves to romantic happy endings. If they do, they make a point of defanging the husband in question, as a way of reassuring their (primarily female) audience that he doesn’t pose a threat to the heroine anymore. But by swapping the gender of her characters, Chokshi subverts this traditional power dynamic without replacing it with a new, more interesting one. Gender-bending a narrative structure that was created to make a point about patriarchy doesn’t work thematically, unless you substitute patriarchy for an equally compelling power structure.
But The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is not trying to be thematically resonant. It wants to entertain you, and in my case, it did. So I’m choosing to avoid looking too closely at its flaws, and be generous with my rating. After all, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I first read it years ago, and that must count for something.
However, that someone is not me.
Reader, I loved this book. I first read it over two years ago, long before it was even announced to the public. I went into that early draft with no expectations at all, which is probably why I ended up enjoying it so much. In my opinion, marketing this as a fantasy novel was a mistake. This is a gothic thriller inspired by classic fairy tales and centered around two toxic, obsessive relationships: the marriage between an unnamed male narrator and an enigmatic heiress, and the friendship between said heiress and her childhood best friend, now mysteriously disappeared.
I think the main reason I enjoyed The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is its intertextual nature. Right off the bat, Chokshi makes it clear that she’s drawing from and referencing the work of other authors, from Angela Carter to Daphne du Maurier. Not only is the narrator a folklore researcher, he’s also obviously meant to be a gender-bent Bluebeard protagonist. The characters openly discuss fairy tales and mythology, playing with metafictional ideas and trying to incorporate elements from the stories they love into their lives. This isn’t always done gracefully—a lot of the time, the references feel heavy-handed and almost forced—but I enjoyed them nonetheless.
Ultimately, I think this was due to the fact that the author’s literary taste seems to overlap almost perfectly with mine. I too love analyzing folk tales, picking them apart to find common tropes and dynamics across different cultures. I, too, love gothic novels about terrible women and their not-quite-sapphic relationships. For the love of a good, thrilling, campy gothic, I’m even willing to put up with a heavy dose of purple prose and melodrama. If anything, I’m disappointed this book didn’t lean even further into its premise: I would have loved a more thorough exploration of the implications of a gender bent Bluebeard retelling, or a deconstruction of the class, gender, and colonial foundations of the gothic genre. But I guess Chokshi was never interested in any of this. She wanted to write a fun, commercial novel based on her favorite classics, with a compelling villain and a love story you could root for.
Which is partly why this book doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny: gothic novels and cautionary tales about murderous husbands don’t usually lend themselves to romantic happy endings. If they do, they make a point of defanging the husband in question, as a way of reassuring their (primarily female) audience that he doesn’t pose a threat to the heroine anymore. But by swapping the gender of her characters, Chokshi subverts this traditional power dynamic without replacing it with a new, more interesting one. Gender-bending a narrative structure that was created to make a point about patriarchy doesn’t work thematically, unless you substitute patriarchy for an equally compelling power structure.
But The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is not trying to be thematically resonant. It wants to entertain you, and in my case, it did. So I’m choosing to avoid looking too closely at its flaws, and be generous with my rating. After all, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I first read it years ago, and that must count for something.
February 17, 2023
The Harper Collins Union strike has finally ended!
Okay, I LOVED this book! So much more than I ever expected to. However, I suspect it won't be what some readers are expecting, especially if they know Chokshi from her YA novels.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is quite a dark sort of fairy tale for adults, and much darker than I would have expected. Similarities to her YA books include lush, descriptive prose and a love of of mythology. Otherwise this gothic novel is much grittier, more disturbing, and draws characters who are morally grey at best. It is a gender-bent Bluebeard retelling, but it is also drawing on many other dark fairytales. All as a way of talking about abuse, grooming, trauma, enmeshed relationships, and cycles of violence. It was exactly my sort of dark, gothic story with a whole lot of feelings.
We get two character perspectives and two timelines. A man who loves fairytales and is married to a beautiful but mysterious woman named Indigo who asks him not to pry into her past. But when they return to the estate of her childhood- a place where once upon a time Indigo and Azul were the closest of friends- he must decide if he's willing to risk his marriage in search of the truth.
Years past, Azure meets Indigo as a young girl and is drawn into her darkly magical world as an escape from her family life. But as they get older, she is pulled between Indigo's world and the world outside.
I won't say much more, but there are definitely queer undertones to the friendship between the two girls and in many ways the entire book is darkly seductive. It's a stunning adult debut that seamlessly weaves mythology and fairytales into this tense gothic story of love and obsession. I look forward to more like this from Chokshi!
Content warnings include violence, gore, self-harm, murder, bullying, disordered eating, suicidal ideation, grooming, domestic violence...
Okay, I LOVED this book! So much more than I ever expected to. However, I suspect it won't be what some readers are expecting, especially if they know Chokshi from her YA novels.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is quite a dark sort of fairy tale for adults, and much darker than I would have expected. Similarities to her YA books include lush, descriptive prose and a love of of mythology. Otherwise this gothic novel is much grittier, more disturbing, and draws characters who are morally grey at best. It is a gender-bent Bluebeard retelling, but it is also drawing on many other dark fairytales. All as a way of talking about abuse, grooming, trauma, enmeshed relationships, and cycles of violence. It was exactly my sort of dark, gothic story with a whole lot of feelings.
We get two character perspectives and two timelines. A man who loves fairytales and is married to a beautiful but mysterious woman named Indigo who asks him not to pry into her past. But when they return to the estate of her childhood- a place where once upon a time Indigo and Azul were the closest of friends- he must decide if he's willing to risk his marriage in search of the truth.
Years past, Azure meets Indigo as a young girl and is drawn into her darkly magical world as an escape from her family life. But as they get older, she is pulled between Indigo's world and the world outside.
I won't say much more, but there are definitely queer undertones to the friendship between the two girls and in many ways the entire book is darkly seductive. It's a stunning adult debut that seamlessly weaves mythology and fairytales into this tense gothic story of love and obsession. I look forward to more like this from Chokshi!
Content warnings include violence, gore, self-harm, murder, bullying, disordered eating, suicidal ideation, grooming, domestic violence...
February 3, 2023
My favorite Roshani Chokshi book yet. Absolutely delicious prose and a magical, addictive tale.
January 27, 2023
8.43 on CAWPILE.
Wow. Just wow.
Wow. Just wow.
May 13, 2023
There's a recurring theme in the books I consider my favorites: Aching.
Aching from unrequited love;
Tessa walking circles in the dark night for fear that Ravis loves another, deciding at daybreak to continue her travels alone, not knowing he'll follow right behind her in The Barbed Coil.
Hrathen realizing he loves Sarene right before his death in Elantris.
The aching loneliness of isolation;
As experienced by the Sisters in Black Narcissus, hidden away in a mountaintop convent in India, and further cut off by their colonizing religion.
And by Merricat and Constance in We Have Always Lived in the Castle, too far gone to ever return to normal life.
An ache for things lost;
Like a way of life, as in The Stand, Migrations, and How High We Go in the Dark.
Freedom, like May's in Sin Eater or the Acorn community's in Octavia E. Butler's Earthseed duology.
Childhood innocence in The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore and Betty.
Or your only friend in the world, as happens to Claudia in Monday's Not Coming.
The ache for things that may never happen;
Darcy's wish to travel, having yet to even leave Maine in Grit.
Anna and Emery's wish for a happy ending in The Luminaries.
And the ache for things that will always happen, good or bad;
The sting of others' gossip in A Swift Pure Cry.
Aunt Cordelia telling Julie, "I'm glad it's Danny," for the niece she raised has grown up, and it's her turn for love and life in Up a Road Slowly.
Needy and neglected. Painful and bittersweet. Dreamy and longing. Empty and full.
Aching.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride embodies the full experience of achiness that I cherish to read of. That quality is so rare, so real and raw, affecting me much more deeply than passionate love scenes, gruesome death scenes, or wordy text blocks ever could.
I'm so glad to welcome this book into my favorites, where it will keep happy company with others of its kind.
Books so achy they make my chest feel hollow, but my heart feel so big.
Aching from unrequited love;
Tessa walking circles in the dark night for fear that Ravis loves another, deciding at daybreak to continue her travels alone, not knowing he'll follow right behind her in The Barbed Coil.
Hrathen realizing he loves Sarene right before his death in Elantris.
The aching loneliness of isolation;
As experienced by the Sisters in Black Narcissus, hidden away in a mountaintop convent in India, and further cut off by their colonizing religion.
And by Merricat and Constance in We Have Always Lived in the Castle, too far gone to ever return to normal life.
An ache for things lost;
Like a way of life, as in The Stand, Migrations, and How High We Go in the Dark.
Freedom, like May's in Sin Eater or the Acorn community's in Octavia E. Butler's Earthseed duology.
Childhood innocence in The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore and Betty.
Or your only friend in the world, as happens to Claudia in Monday's Not Coming.
The ache for things that may never happen;
Darcy's wish to travel, having yet to even leave Maine in Grit.
Anna and Emery's wish for a happy ending in The Luminaries.
And the ache for things that will always happen, good or bad;
The sting of others' gossip in A Swift Pure Cry.
Aunt Cordelia telling Julie, "I'm glad it's Danny," for the niece she raised has grown up, and it's her turn for love and life in Up a Road Slowly.
Needy and neglected. Painful and bittersweet. Dreamy and longing. Empty and full.
Aching.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride embodies the full experience of achiness that I cherish to read of. That quality is so rare, so real and raw, affecting me much more deeply than passionate love scenes, gruesome death scenes, or wordy text blocks ever could.
I'm so glad to welcome this book into my favorites, where it will keep happy company with others of its kind.
Books so achy they make my chest feel hollow, but my heart feel so big.
January 17, 2024
I’m honestly shocked at how much I enjoyed this book 🤗 I’m not one to lean towards fantasy, due to my lack of imagination. 🤷🏼♀️ But this one had me hooked and I’m still pondering it… 🧐
October 17, 2023
“If you combed through enough fairy tales, untangled their roots, and shook out their branches, you would find that they are infested with oaths. Oaths are brittle things, not unlike an egg. Though they go by different names depending on the myth–troths and gets, vows and tynged–there is one thing they all share: they must be broken for there to be a story. Only a shattered promise yields a rich, glittering yoke of a tale.”
This is a book to pore over. A book that makes you want to trace your fingers along each line, coaxing the words into your fingertips, just to bring your digits up to puckered lips and suck the ink dry, savoring each flavorful drop of meaning.
It holds a power in its pages, one of enchanting intoxication. If it’s possible to get drunk on words alone, this book is the god’s nectar to your everyday literary watered-down wine. It’s simultaneously luxurious like a rose and sharp like a thorn, its wit as enscorcelling and impressive as its characters.
By thematically weaving together tales such as Bluebeard, Eros and Psyche, Catskins, Beauty and the Beast, and more, Chokshi explores a liminal unease found between reality and fantasy, truth and lie, promises bound and broken. This book is a catalog of ghost and story through gothic prose, and in its own way, a thesis on the lessons of fairytales and the danger of the power they hold. Or rather the power we have to hold them. What is love if not fear? What is devotion if not sacrifice? What is a fairytale if not a weapon and a warning in one?
This book utters itself like a secret. And though like all secrets, it is inevitably spilled, its knowledge, also like with all secrets, comes with a sacrifice. It is not given freely, but earned through the effort of reading it. This story is to me: fragile, intangible, a whisper declared to the heart. And to attempt to clumsily summarize it in words or break its spell with the utterance of its particulars seems to me nothing short of blasphemous.
But I can say: THE LAST TALE OF THE FLOWER BRIDE is a brand new favorite of mine and its praises will be living on the tip of my tongue for a VERY long time. I was absolutely captivated by its purple prose and drawn in by its deconstruction of fairytale motifs. I fell in love with its gothic atmosphere and haunting cast of characters (including a hair-raising house), and felt a little too seen in its depiction of homoerotic codependent friendships between young girls (I didn’t know In A Week by Hozier could be known like this). But mostly, I left it believing in just a little more magic than I did when my journey into its pages began. And isn’t that what the goal of reading is? To emerge in a cloud of bibliosmia, stretching our limbs and rubbing our eyes and upon reacquainting ourselves with our reality, to find that when we weren’t looking, some unnameable thing from the depths of the story has nuzzled its way into our soul, leaving the world looking (or perhaps feeling) just a little bit different than it was before? To be inexplicably, indefinably, but undeniably changed?
CW: loss of sibling (past), blood and gore, animal death, abusive relationship, abusive parent, bullying, alcohol consumption, drugging, self-harm (for magic), parental death (past), character death, dead body, cannibalism, tooth horror (light), sexual content
This is a book to pore over. A book that makes you want to trace your fingers along each line, coaxing the words into your fingertips, just to bring your digits up to puckered lips and suck the ink dry, savoring each flavorful drop of meaning.
It holds a power in its pages, one of enchanting intoxication. If it’s possible to get drunk on words alone, this book is the god’s nectar to your everyday literary watered-down wine. It’s simultaneously luxurious like a rose and sharp like a thorn, its wit as enscorcelling and impressive as its characters.
By thematically weaving together tales such as Bluebeard, Eros and Psyche, Catskins, Beauty and the Beast, and more, Chokshi explores a liminal unease found between reality and fantasy, truth and lie, promises bound and broken. This book is a catalog of ghost and story through gothic prose, and in its own way, a thesis on the lessons of fairytales and the danger of the power they hold. Or rather the power we have to hold them. What is love if not fear? What is devotion if not sacrifice? What is a fairytale if not a weapon and a warning in one?
This book utters itself like a secret. And though like all secrets, it is inevitably spilled, its knowledge, also like with all secrets, comes with a sacrifice. It is not given freely, but earned through the effort of reading it. This story is to me: fragile, intangible, a whisper declared to the heart. And to attempt to clumsily summarize it in words or break its spell with the utterance of its particulars seems to me nothing short of blasphemous.
But I can say: THE LAST TALE OF THE FLOWER BRIDE is a brand new favorite of mine and its praises will be living on the tip of my tongue for a VERY long time. I was absolutely captivated by its purple prose and drawn in by its deconstruction of fairytale motifs. I fell in love with its gothic atmosphere and haunting cast of characters (including a hair-raising house), and felt a little too seen in its depiction of homoerotic codependent friendships between young girls (I didn’t know In A Week by Hozier could be known like this). But mostly, I left it believing in just a little more magic than I did when my journey into its pages began. And isn’t that what the goal of reading is? To emerge in a cloud of bibliosmia, stretching our limbs and rubbing our eyes and upon reacquainting ourselves with our reality, to find that when we weren’t looking, some unnameable thing from the depths of the story has nuzzled its way into our soul, leaving the world looking (or perhaps feeling) just a little bit different than it was before? To be inexplicably, indefinably, but undeniably changed?
CW: loss of sibling (past), blood and gore, animal death, abusive relationship, abusive parent, bullying, alcohol consumption, drugging, self-harm (for magic), parental death (past), character death, dead body, cannibalism, tooth horror (light), sexual content
March 2, 2023
3/1/23 Edit: On 2/16/23 this had a 3.96 rating and today it has a 3.87. I suspect it will dip to at least ~3.8 before it stabilizes, but this is definitely a polarizing, "marmite" book-- you either love it or hate it! So definitely read a variety of reviews.
---------------------------------
I think I actually hated this? It's not a bad book, it's just a terrible book for me. (And already a major contender for worst book of 2023!)
First Chapter:
It's giving dark, it's giving mysterious, it's giving surprise, it's giving eat the rich. I thought this was such a startling and fantastic start... but man, the rest of the book did not follow.
Jay Kristoff, is that you?:
"Her red lips were a slash of blood." This was only on page 18 and I knew as soon as I made the Kristoff association in my mind that this writing was going to be severely not for me.
Characters:
Are people actually like this? They remind me of sheer curtains-- blowing in the breeze, entirely decorative, lacking any substance, see-through. The characters walk through life as if it's a dream and there is nothing of weight; nothing matters except for their whims.
Plot:
Nope. No plot here.
POVs:
We have one POV for the first 50 pages, but as the story drags on this POV only blips up for chapters that are roughly only 5 pages or less where nothing happens except for philosophizing, waxing poetic, or remembering fake memories.
The other POV is clearly the story the author wanted to write. And... idk, I don't care about contemporary fiction at all. It feels similar to a dark take on Bridge to Terabithia, but with layers and layers of toxicity thrown in. Please look up trigger warnings.
Adult or YA:
I do not like this new trend of categorizing an author's work as Adult and then spending the majority of the text in journal entries/flashbacks/etc to when the characters were teens dealing with teen issues in a very teen way. And that's what we have here. The bulk of the story is melodramatic teens in the past, while the present-day (and any Adult themes that might go with it) is very minimal and just dealing with the fall-out of what happened when they were teens.
The nuance, the themes, and the depth of the subject matter all skew young. The characters are caught up in pursuing whatever happened to them as children, and therefore never really have a chance to grow up themselves. This is a YA book (or maybe New Adult at best).
The Writing:
3/1/23 edit: My ebook hold came in! In this very short book, they refer to mouths as a "slash" 5 times.
Fairytales:
The characters are obsessed with fairytales-- researching them, talking about them, pretending to live in them, confusing their memories with them, cosplaying them for games, etc. They mention fairytales SO MUCH in this and, as someone who genuinely loves fairytales, it got on my nerves.
Overall:
Ultimately this is a book about toxic female friendships (a relationship so deep that it may even be sapphic), escaping childhood trauma via fairytales, and flawed parents. There is no Fantasy here, but the writing is written as if there is. The mysteries and drama are simple in their conclusion and honestly the book is only as long as it is because of the author being unable to edit down their copious metaphors and flowery language.
No, thank you.
---------------------------------
I think I actually hated this? It's not a bad book, it's just a terrible book for me. (And already a major contender for worst book of 2023!)
First Chapter:
It's giving dark, it's giving mysterious, it's giving surprise, it's giving eat the rich. I thought this was such a startling and fantastic start... but man, the rest of the book did not follow.
Jay Kristoff, is that you?:
"Her red lips were a slash of blood." This was only on page 18 and I knew as soon as I made the Kristoff association in my mind that this writing was going to be severely not for me.
Characters:
Are people actually like this? They remind me of sheer curtains-- blowing in the breeze, entirely decorative, lacking any substance, see-through. The characters walk through life as if it's a dream and there is nothing of weight; nothing matters except for their whims.
Plot:
Nope. No plot here.
POVs:
We have one POV for the first 50 pages, but as the story drags on this POV only blips up for chapters that are roughly only 5 pages or less where nothing happens except for philosophizing, waxing poetic, or remembering fake memories.
The other POV is clearly the story the author wanted to write. And... idk, I don't care about contemporary fiction at all. It feels similar to a dark take on Bridge to Terabithia, but with layers and layers of toxicity thrown in. Please look up trigger warnings.
Adult or YA:
I do not like this new trend of categorizing an author's work as Adult and then spending the majority of the text in journal entries/flashbacks/etc to when the characters were teens dealing with teen issues in a very teen way. And that's what we have here. The bulk of the story is melodramatic teens in the past, while the present-day (and any Adult themes that might go with it) is very minimal and just dealing with the fall-out of what happened when they were teens.
The nuance, the themes, and the depth of the subject matter all skew young. The characters are caught up in pursuing whatever happened to them as children, and therefore never really have a chance to grow up themselves. This is a YA book (or maybe New Adult at best).
The Writing:
"A large, grinning crescent moon dangled from the gate, as if Indigo had speared it from the sky and kept it like a trophy."I'm not into lyrical, purple prose in general. Poetry does nothing but make me crabby, so there's definitely a thin line that I don't want to be crossed. Just say something and get to the point, don't paint around it and describe it in a series of metaphors and call that a paragraph. Also-- can someone with the ebook tell me how many times "slash" is used? Cause I swear every mouth was a "slash." It wants to be edgy, it wants to be mysterious, it wants to be beautiful... but I just felt like it was wasting my time.
"She was coltish and long-femured, the joints of her shoulders so tanned and glossy her bones shone."
3/1/23 edit: My ebook hold came in! In this very short book, they refer to mouths as a "slash" 5 times.
Fairytales:
The characters are obsessed with fairytales-- researching them, talking about them, pretending to live in them, confusing their memories with them, cosplaying them for games, etc. They mention fairytales SO MUCH in this and, as someone who genuinely loves fairytales, it got on my nerves.
Overall:
Ultimately this is a book about toxic female friendships (a relationship so deep that it may even be sapphic), escaping childhood trauma via fairytales, and flawed parents. There is no Fantasy here, but the writing is written as if there is. The mysteries and drama are simple in their conclusion and honestly the book is only as long as it is because of the author being unable to edit down their copious metaphors and flowery language.
No, thank you.
June 29, 2024
Instagram || Threads || Facebook || Amazon || TikTok
THE LAST TALE OF THE FLOWER BRIDE is such a bizarre and surreal story, like an Angela Carter tale: the beauty of the prose masks darkness and biting social commentary that gnaws at the reader like the gouge of teeth on bone. I actually didn't care for the last book I read by this author, but this gender-reverse fairytale is marvelous and the things that it did well, it did phenomenally well.
Basically, a man meets a woman named Indigo while on vacation and ends up falling in love with her. They get married, but in return, he must never ask about her secrets. In this other narrative thread, we meet Azure, Indigo's childhood friend, who falls under the same seductive spell that our narrative bridegroom has. We are unsure if either of them escaped the spider-like snare of their shared seductress, however, although the numerous analogies to Bluebeard, The Robber Bridegroom, and Melusine hint at tragedy, despair, and doom.
For the first half of this book, I was really into it. I thought the weaving of the fairytale mythos into the magic-realism elements was great, I loved the diverse characters, and I'm also a huge fan of a good female villain. I do feel like the second half was a little confusing, and not necessarily in a good way. However, I was still invested enough in the writing and the story that I didn't care too much.
Despite the three-star rating, I highly recommend this to anyone who loves gothic horror, magic-realism, and fairytales. I'll definitely have to check out more of Chokshi's work. This book is hard proof that even if you really didn't like a book by an author, sometimes, they totally deserve that second chance.
3 to 3.5 stars
March 20, 2023
“You say she loves you, but what is she anyway?”
The mystery behind who Indigo is is the initial driving point for my interest in starting and continuing this book. I felt that air of mystery slowly dwindle as it became clear who she was, especially from the perspective of Azure, her childhood friend. Nevertheless, that ambiance of darkness was felt throughout the book and made for an intriguing experience.
Seeing that this story was going to be told from the perspectives of a childhood friend and a bridegroom added to my initial curiosity. Those are two distinct characters in Indigo’s life and we don’t get Indigo's point of view. I became more engrossed in Indigo and Azure’s story which is probably the goal of the author since Azure’s perspective is more. Even though the bridegroom has his own story like when he talks about his past, I found it to have little to no relevance.
I think this was a cool experience but it’s not giving memorable. I would still recommend.
The mystery behind who Indigo is is the initial driving point for my interest in starting and continuing this book. I felt that air of mystery slowly dwindle as it became clear who she was, especially from the perspective of Azure, her childhood friend. Nevertheless, that ambiance of darkness was felt throughout the book and made for an intriguing experience.
Seeing that this story was going to be told from the perspectives of a childhood friend and a bridegroom added to my initial curiosity. Those are two distinct characters in Indigo’s life and we don’t get Indigo's point of view. I became more engrossed in Indigo and Azure’s story which is probably the goal of the author since Azure’s perspective is more. Even though the bridegroom has his own story like when he talks about his past, I found it to have little to no relevance.
I think this was a cool experience but it’s not giving memorable. I would still recommend.
January 24, 2023
Finished this story about stories & I loved it. Not only because it has intriguing characters, a mysterious tone, and a beautiful writing, but also because it gives you an unforgettable reading experience like a sentimental and serene sky surprised by silent storms. rtc.
earlier anticipation and excitement: roshani chokshi's adult debut is a fairy-tale-laden gothic novel OKAY STOP, give this to me now.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,774 reviews