Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar

3 reviews

kbairbooks's review

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challenging dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Would have DNF‘Ed if I didn’t have my reason. 

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iffygeneia's review

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adventurous emotional tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

So the premise sounded amazing: a modern day story laced with Hindu-themed fantasy. And that part of the story was by far the best part.
It did require a bit of foreknowledge about Hindu mythology. Mainly, the book assumes the reader will know several different kinds of mythological creatures from Hindu mythology - it doesn't explain much beyond the most basic visual descriptions.

It's with the characters and the plot that it starts to fall apart though.
This could have been an amazing coming-of-age story, but there was hardly any character growth. Sheetal herself was just very, very shallow. Her main worries are about 
her boyfriend
, or panicking about the currently relevant plot point. As the plot moved around randomly, Sheetal also seemed all over the place. She has a clear goal
(saving her dad)
, but constantly gets distraced by the currently relevant plot point. It made her seem fickle, like she didn't care about
her dad
when the plot demanded her attention.

The plot did finally come together in the end, but in the most predictable way.
In the end, though a lot did change, Sheetal herself didn't seem much affected by all of it.

All in all: its fine for its Teen target audience, but as an adult I expected more depth.

(Note: I listened to the audiobook version read by Soneela Nankani. She was excellent.)


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afireadsabit's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Star Daughter has so much. 
- mythology
- glowing powerful mc 
- coming into your own
- competitions
- beautiful, ethereal writing

Even if you go into this expecting a magical fantasy, you'll learn it is also about being human and not only learning about the marvelous world about gods and goddesses 



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