I've finished the breathtaking 'The Last Tale of the Flower Bride' by Roshani Chokshi. For fans of 'Mexican Gothic', 'My Dark Vanessa' and 'The Ophelia Girls'. A dark, fantastical tale told from both Azure and the Bride Groom. A dark and sinister fairytale which is so beautifully written, I felt like the book was happening around me as if I was actually there. I loved the idea of the House of Dreams and the Other World but Azure and Indigo should have left well alone messing with things they didn't understand. (Read as Asha on audiobook). Without giving too much away, it was a brilliantly creepy book that would lend itself well on screen. I felt absolutely consumed by this book although it is quite disturbing at times. Themes of; fairytale, fae, magic, blood magic, fantasy, death, paedophilia

This book was so incredibly beautiful and I loved it so much, from start to finish, I was hooked. I need a physical copy NOW.

This book was honestly absolutely stunning! I was a bit nervous to read it as I'd been hearing about it a LOT but it was definitely worth it! Would definitely recommend!

Adored this absolute fever dream of a novel - beautiful writing, compelling characters, and a love of storytelling throughout.

Thank you for giving me an arc of this book!

I ended up listening to an audio of this and it was the best decision I ever made. The book felt very fairytale like while at the same time being quite a bit darker than a fairytale. I loved how we slowly figured more out about indigo while also getting to know the other people and how the past and the current time slowly got together to form one ending. There were a few plot twists that I did not see coming but that were so so good! I would completely recommend this to anyone that might be interested!

My thanks to NetGalley and Hodderscape publishing for the opportunity to review this book.
Loved this very much in the relms of Addie La Rue. So if you enjoyed that this is the book for you.

4*’s – gorgeous writing and lush atmosphere. Rebecca meets faerie in this gothic adult novel and I was hooked. I was so invested in the husbands history and narrative and felt compelled to investigate his mysterious wife along with him. Unsure what would have pushed this story to a 5* but I am looking forward to reading more from Roahani Chokshi in the future. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of the book.

This is classed as an adult fantasy, although it feels much more like a YA coming of age story with no real fantasy elements other than a focus on fairytales.

A man and woman meet, get married, and live their lives defined by fairytales and myths. Intercut with that is the story of the wife growing up, told from the point of view from her best friend, and their somewhat odd teen years.

I struggled with this, I don't feel that the blurb reflects the book. The focus of the story is mainly on the teenagers, and there is no indication that any of the fantastical things they believe are real, they just come across as very odd and with an inability to grow up.

The writing is heavily into purple prose territory and I found it sometimes difficult to navigate through sentences and paragraphs which didn't really mean anything.

The adult storyline is from the point of view of the husband (who is so unimportant he doesn't get a name), but they don't actually seem to do anything. They're just... rich and really into living their lives according to certain myths?

It's essentially the story of 3 people who can't distinguish reality from childhood stories, and then there's a reveal which was very obvious

This one just wasn't for me.

Okay, I really enjoyed the writing in this book. I do own a few books by Roshani Chokshi, but I never took the time to actually read them, and when I got this one, I just sat down and started it. The writing was exceptional, it was so beautiful. It's definitely not just centered on the marriage between Indigo and the bridegroom, but also Azure.

It was beautiful to see both stories unravel very slowly. Honestly this time I didn't even mind that it wasn't a fact paced story. I do think that looking into the story and reading some review, even the spoilerfree ones, was a mistake. I think I wouldn't have minded being completely clueless.

I do enjoy Roshani Chokshi’s heavy, poetic prose but in this novel it feels like it verges on the very extreme side of the purple scale… almost like a Men Write Women parody at times!

'She looked like the nostalgia that settles in your ribs at the end of a story you have never read, yet nevertheless know.
In the dark sheaf of her hair, I saw the forest floors where wolves stalked milk-skinned maidens. In the hollow of her neck, I saw the light of precious jewels kept safe in the stinking jaws of a slumbering sea monster. In her parted lips, I glimpsed something that—in my own unpracticed, sloppy awe—struck me as holy. For a moment, I saw a window and not my wife. When I walked to her, it 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.'
– Roshani Chokshi, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

Yes, the Bridegroom and his Bride are the kind of adult human beings who live their entire life like this, where every fruit snack is a forbidden treat dangled by the fae as a temptation to bargain your soul and they don’t just take a nap but tumble into the realm of Morpheus and become the playthings of the underworld spirits of sleep. It felt wearing quite quickly.

That said, this heavily symbolic, mythologically rich descriptive prose worked far better for the flashbacks that we see in the perspective of Indigo’s childhood best friend Azure – perhaps because it is easier to understand and forgive such high drama and Chosen One energy in teenage girls on the cusp of womanhood and rife with hormones that in two grown adults, married and holding down responsible jobs in the city!

Indigo comes across as very much an Estella type of girl and woman – cold, ethereal, manipulative, unknowable, cruel and lonely. From the Bridegroom’s perspective this comes across like she is a manic pixie dream girl, but of the gothic variety, with her whole purpose being to change his life in unpredictable and magical ways. From Azure’s perspective, we can have more sympathy for both girls, trapped in their toxic friendship dynamic and a society that doesn’t understand them, and desperately escaping into the world of their imaginations. What feels like a whimsical coping strategy in childhood – desperately clinging on to the play world to avoid the terrible fate of Susan Pevensie – feels like severe mental illness in adults – trying to avoid ever growing up or accepting the existence of the real world.

Despite all of these flaws, the story and characters did work their magic on me gradually, and I went from really struggling to keep reading to struggling to put the book down by the end. And I was haunted by the characters after moving on to other books, finding myself slipping back into that languorous perfumed atmosphere of toxic love, co-dependency and delusion, where nothing is real other than your own created figments and no one’s feelings matter but your own. Apparently, the spiral into illusions of unreality (and purple prose) is a seductive one!

This was such an interesting read! I found myself so engrossed in the story, the characters had such incredible arcs, and I can't wait to follow this author's journey!

3 stars.

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride has everything I tend to adore in books - a gothic atmosphere, toxic relationships and beautiful writing, which were all aspects of this book that I loved. There was certainly something darkly romantic about this story, from the enchanting use of fairy tales and lore, to the gorgeous prose.

However, whilst I adored the gothic atmosphere in this book, the characters themselves fell a little bit flat for me, particularly the husband. The mystery was also slightly disappointing, as the plot twist near the end was fairly predictable.

Ultimately, a beautifully written book with a plot and characters that let the story down slightly overall.

Darkly gothic, this was a haunting story filled with lyrical writing and a strangely profound romance. I absolutely loved this.

An interesting and mysterious story

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a Gothic story written by Roshani Chokshi and tells the story of Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada.

In this story we follow the medievalist, now Indigo's husband, as he searches for the disappeared Azure and traces of the Casteñada family secrets and in particular those of Indigo.

I'm sorry to say that I didn't love the narration at the beginning of the story. It is written from the first person perspective, but still I had the feeling that someone was being written about and I just didn't connect with the characters and the story. But after a short time, the story captivated me. It was really exciting and once I got used to the narrative style, I couldn't put the book down. The dark, even eerie mood and the question of what happened to Azure kept me awake! And also Indigo is a character that does not let you go. I just never knew where I stood with her, and I followed eagerly as we gradually uncovered her past.

I give "The Last Tale of the Flower Bride" 4 out of 5 stars.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providinge with an ARC.

This book is totally different from what I thought it would be, not in a bad way. I just wasn't expecting such a strong fantasy side to it, maybe because in my head I was focused on the marriage aspect and thought this would be an analysis of marriage/relationships that showcases the dark sides of it etc. It was that too, but there was this fantasy element mixed in. I did love the gothic vibes and atmosphere, but I feel like there was something that stopped me from enjoying this book fully. I feel like I didn't connect with the characters the way I wanted to, and that made me kind of indifferent to their journeys which is always something sad when you're reading a book and find yourself not so invested in it. Also, although I didn't hate it per se, the prose with this fable tone and dreamlike qualities were also a bit... Meh for me. I must admit, I didn't finish this one, and I feel like that is all you need to know from me.

This didn’t disappoint at all! I’ve been waiting for this release for a while after hearing every good thing about the author’s previous series.
Would recommend

This is a fairy tale in the traditional Grimms fairy tale sense - macabre and creepy.

A story of hidden secrets between a married couple - the groom seeming relatively normal, the bride mysterious and with some secretive history that she orders him never to pursue. Of course that's not going to happen, and that's our story.

This was a good read, and completely unique. However it took me a while to get into.

As much as it pains me to say this, this book was not for me. It has gorgeous prose and a very otherworldly feel to it which is what I generally love about Chokshi's writing, but somehow it didn't hit this time. I didn't care enough for the characters to root for them, which was the major issue throughout the book for me.

Like many great Gothic novels before it, this book is thick with homoerotic undertones. You can certainly read the female friendship as platonic - toxic, dark, but still platonic - but there is something about the possessiveness, the obsession, the claiming each other with a first kiss that has a distinctily sapphic feel to it.

It tells the story of Indigo, a beautiful, rich and mysterious woman who lives in a world of magic and myth, told through the eyes of the people that love her the most - her unnamed husband, and her sister, her childhood soulmate, Azure.

Flower Bride is all of Chokshi’s thick, lush prose from The Gilded Wolves, but turned up to eleven. The opulence and magic of the story is mirrored by the language itself, and everything glimmers darkly with ortherwordliness.

In many ways, the excess of the prose speaks to the themes of the book. The escape from pain, the sheltering from reality - the character live in their darkly beautiful fantasy world, pushing away all things mundane, and so the prose does too, teetering on an axis of uncertainty, never quite allowing the audience to know what is real and what isn’t.

The plot is somewhat slow-moving - on reflection, not a lot actually happens but everything is imbued with such intensity that it was hard to look away. It’s about fairytales and fantasies, and the darkness and broken promises they are built upon, and the obsessive, addictive and often cruel nature of the love that binds them together.

Do we lose magic as we grow older, or do we merely come to see it in the everyday? Is time the greatest curse of all?
Does love eclipse all sins?

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a gothic fairy tale all of its own, something charming and beautiful that slowly unravels and descends into the shadows.

We follow Azure, Indigo and the Bridegroom - across different timelines and perspectives.

Indigo and Azure were the best of friends. Spending every moment they could together as they group up, finding magic and spinning tales. Now Indigo is married, with an agreement that her husband doesn’t dig into her past. What does Indogo have to hide, where is Azure and who is this new Bridegroom?? 👀 And what’s with this house of dreams? What secrets lurk inside?! 🏡

A great tale, full of dark corners and doors to open. This felt like a mix between Bridge to Terabithia and A Simple Favour. Magical and mysterious, full of questions!!

Favourite Quote “the single truth that I am not alone - expands the universe in a way that faith never has.”