The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi Published by William Morrow on February 14 2023
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 289
Format: eBook
Goodreads
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.
After absolutely adoring The Gilded Wolves series (which I will definitely be reviewing and linking at a later point), I was so so excited to delve into a new adult novel by this author. From the design of the cover to the mysteriously vague synopsis, it had its hooks in me.
Now, I’ve finished this book and I’ve sat on my thoughts for a while before finally being ready to share my experience.
My Review:
I am torn. I am torn because I wanted to love this book so much and it had all the markers that would have made it a 5-star read for me, but it just didn’t make it.
A consistent element of this story is its beautiful and haunting prose. I am a sucker for beautiful writing and Chokshi did not fail in this element. HOWEVER…. It was all style and very little substance. As I kept reading, I found nothing of depth was really being said. Eventually, the plethora of metaphors and the flowery language began to wear on me; while it created a fantastically gothic atmosphere, it also weighed down the story immensely with its meaningless melodrama.
This story is about the obsession over fairy tales and folklore – two things that I absolutely adore. But while they mention the fairytales and reference the work of other authors, there was a heavy-handedness in these discussions where I felt I was being hit over the head multiple times by the same point. I wish the author had spent more time incorporating the Bluebeard mythology with her beautiful writing to really make this gothic tale come alive.
This story is told from multiple perspectives: one takes place in the present and is through the eyes of the Bridegroom, the husband of the enigmatic and mysterious heiress Indigo Maxwell-Castenada, and the second takes place in the past and follows the relationship of Indigo and her best friend Azure when they are teenagers. If I’m honest, I didn’t really care about any of them. I struggled to distinguish between the voice of the Bridegroom and the other character from the second perspective; I don’t think the author was able to capture the male voice and perspective very well. In addition, the romance between the Bridegroom and Indigo is rushed and difficult to connect with. In fact, I didn’t connect or feel invested in any element of the story.
There is no plot. Sorry, but if anyone asked me what the story was truly about and what events happened in this almost 300-page book, I would be hard-pressed to tell them. The end “twist” was foreshadowed so many times and it is quite easy to predict so I didn’t get any satisfaction on that front, either.
Ultimately, this was a beautifully written book with very little substance. I was disappointed. There was so much potential here but it just didn’t live up to any of it. Perhaps it was because this novel was marketed as a gothic fantasy when it really was just a gothic thriller. Perhaps it needed some more editing. Either way, this novel didn’t do it for me and I’m going to have to give it a 2 star rating.
