Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

I love Chokshi's writing. I know her style is not for everyone but I've been hooked since reading The Guilded Wolves series. I really enjoyed this adult debut.

Quote I'll be thinking about for a while:

Maybe it is about finding someone whose heart is like a mirror, whose love can make you stand the sight of yourself.

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volanscore's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

I enjoyed some bits of it but wholly, it was like drinking water that couldn’t quench my thirst. There are only two narrators and one (the bridegroom) has such an underdeveloped story that I felt I’d rather read without his chapters. There was so much to be explored about the state of his memories, what happened to him, his escape, but really, there was no development because the story was all about Azure so then why waste time even giving us morsels of another character’s story. The plot-twist was much more disappointing than I’d hoped for the ending. There were so much language that made Indigo seem satanic (references to horns on her head,, it’s obvious really) that I’d imagined that there would be even a small turn with dark fantasy where Indigo was actually some sort of fairy grim reaper or something like that. It really fell apart for me.

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aliyachaudhry's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

sometimes being delulu is NOT the solulu

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cgreenstein's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

To me, this book felt more like one interested in the lushness of the language than in constructing a plot, fleshing out its characters, or laying out its parameters. The last few chapters were full of action, but I still don't know if this was magical realism or just a string of unreliable narrators, what motivated the present-day female main character to behave the way she does, or have any sense of who the main male character is or why he behaves the way he does. There's a lot of telling us that he loves her and telling us about fairytale tropes, but I don't see any grounds for him to love her or actions that show that love, nor do I see the tropes actually being employed. It all feels unmoored somehow, like the author wants to mention all of these symbols and show that they know all these stories, but doesn't actually hang them on to anything. It's not actually a fairytale story at all-- the story would be the same absent all of the fairytale trappings, which are just window dressing for a coming of age story defined by a toxic friendship and then a modern day storyline about a marriage that isn't given the room to feel convincing. Clearly, this one wasn't for me, as is true of most books that, like this one, value language over everything. If you read for language, this book might be your thing.

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