The Last Tale of the Flower Bride: The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller

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I think that is the truest myth that encapsulates marriage. It is the question of whether you can hold on to someone as they're shapeshifting, whether they can hold on to you as you also are shapeshifting. And that was what I wanted to play with in ‘Flower Bride.’ I was very curious about … what would happen when someone wasn't willing to reveal the form that they used to have. What does that do in a marriage, even when there is love?” 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. The book represents toxic friendship quite well. This doesn’t make the characters easy to like, but their motives comes out decently. 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.

Of all the things fairy tales demanded I should believe - dogs with eyes as big as saucers, maidens felled by spindles, queens who do not remove red-hot iron shoes and dance in them until they die - this is the only thing that stretches credulity. That happiness demands so little to stay.” Please be warned, the following section will include spoilers for The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi from the beginning to Chapter 7. Please only read on if you have finished this section! –!SPOILERS!-

There is a man who loves fairytales, myths, and legends. He has devoted his life to the pursuit of the unknown, and this scholarly venture leads him to the clutches of Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. The lavish hotel heiress introduces him to her private collection and envelops him in her dreamy life. The man becomes Indigo’s bridegroom, and they spend years in decadence while acting out their favorite stories featuring goddesses and men, predator and prey. The bridegroom revels in this blissful marriage, and it only exists because he has promised to never ask about Indigo’s past. He’s never cared to pry his mysterious wife for answers, yet temptation will spark when the couple is forced to return to the House of Dreams, Indigo’s childhood home. Here, the secrets of Indigo’s childhood friend, Azure, will bubble to the surface, and the bridegroom must decide if he will retreat to safety or dive in.

But she saw something in me. Something that turned her kiss into a knife that cut me free from the dark.’ Maybe because in the end he’ll go to the Otherworld/disappear himself? As if he was never real at all and thus is name isn’t known.I feel it’s important to point out that this is not a romance, but it is a love story. It’s a book about hurt and broken people, and the lengths they will go to find and keep the ones they love. I felt the characters’ love for one another, but it was also clear that their relationships are toxic and manipulative. 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. So, if you're like me and the above items bother you, I'd skip this one. But if you like the concept and don't mind that kind of thing, I do still recommend this one.