The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi Narrated by Steve West; Sura Siu, was a beautifully written gothic book with a beautiful cover to go with it. I found this audiobook an enjoyable listen from start to finish. It was haunting, which I loved the spooky atmosphere of this book especially with great characters. This book was full of secrets that had me intrigued to find out what happened to them. Just Beautiful!

The narrator was Perfect for this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Hodder & Stoughton Audio, for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Firstly, let me say that the narrators were perfect. They gave nuanced portrayals of the characters and kept me completely engaged with the audio book.



<i>The Last Tale of the Flower Bride</i> is a strange, lyrical blend of unsettling whimsy and contemporary fairy tale. I loved <i>The Star Touched Queen</i> but Chokshi has outdone herself this time. In a clever twist on Bluebeard and the Robber Bridegroom, she takes us down a winding narrative path that leads through multiple iterations of various fairy tales which form a sort of back drop to the MCs lives. The dual pov narration switches between the Bridegroom - married to wealthy and mysterious heiress Indigo, and a past set pov - Azure, who was once Indigo's best friend.



The rules are simple for the Bridegroom, accept Indigo as she is now and promise not to pry into her past. He agrees but then matters call Indigo back to her home and it becomes impossible for him to continue honouring his promise. As sinister events unwind exposing ugly and frightening truths from the path, the Bridegroom is left wondering if he knows Indigo at all and just what his fate will be.



This book examines the power of storytelling both for good and ill, and in a mirroring of this theme, just how much we surrender of ourselves when we become too immersed in another person. Can you ever truly trust someone else with your true name? And where do childish pranks and adult cruelty divide from each other? This was exquisitely written, lush and mesmerising. At times as gruesomely nasty as the darkest fairy tale origin, but at the same time also containing the seeds of light that lead you out of the darkness.



A perfect, self contained story that keeps coming back to me. Highly recommend.

This was a brilliantly written gothic novel, exactly like I knew it would be! I loved the spooky atmosphere of this book and the damaged characters. It was full of secrets and had me intrigued and captivated the whole way through. I’m so glad I have the beautiful fairyloot version and the arc of this one.

Many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton Audio and Roshani Chokshi for the advanced audio copy of The Last Tale of the Flower Bride via NetGalley, in return for my honest and unbiased review. Quick note: I don’t recap plots in my reviews, as it’s easy enough to read the book’s synopsis and blurbs, I purely focus on my feelings & opinions of how the books makes me feel.

I absolutely adored this book, and I think it was made all the more enjoyable by it being in audiobook format.

The story was rich, dark, and twisted – in a delicious way. Beautifully detailed and descriptive, Roshani Chokshi tells a haunting gothic story intertwined with fairy and folk tales. There is so much obvious research that has gone into this novel, I heard old stories I’d listened to as a child and brand new ones I’d never heard before.

Told from two viewpoints and multiple time periods, you get an immersive view of these characters’ lives. I absolutely recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a slightly haunting, slightly complex, highly twisty tale to mess with their minds a little…or perhaps a lot!

The narrators were a joy to listen to. Both Steve West and Sura Siu did the characters full justice. Listening to the story in audio format added to the atmosphere, and I found it even more enjoyable and sumptuous than if I’d read it myself in print.

Moods: challenging, dark, emotional, mysterious, sad, tense
Pace: medium
Character development: medium
Plot or character driven: 50/50
Diversity: medium
Spice: 1.5/5

Trigger warnings: Child abuse, Death, Paedophilia, Physical or mental abuse, Sexual abuse/assault/harassment, Terminal illness

Rating
Story: 5/5
Audio: 5/5

This review will be featured on my blog at www.mymentalshelf.com in future

What a story. This is a dark, romantic, magical story about growing up and leaving childhood fantasy behind. Incredibly written and beautifully narrated, definitely a new favourite of mine.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This has a rich gothic atmosphere and I really liked the conclusion, just not really the path to it, The main problems I had with it were the slow plot, bridegroom's pov and the audiobook. the writing is beautiful but a little inconsistent, sometimes inspiring and sometimes feeling more like filler. i would've given it 2.5 stars but the last quarter redeemed it for me.

First things first, I highly recommend listening to the audio of this because talk about some ‘come to bed’ voices - not sure how sexy this was meant to be but the audio definitely amped it up 😂

But this is also just a gloriously gothic tale of obsession, full of darkness and passion, where you’re never sure if it’s reality or something supernatural going on. The writing and setting are stunning and I loved the dual narratives that move between past and present as we unfold the mystery of what really happened to Azure (even the names are sexy right?!!). Did I guess the ending pretty early on? Sure. But was it still a compelling and decadent read? 100%! I’ll definitely be picking up more by the author.

“You never forget the moment when beauty turns to horror”

My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton Audio for a review copy via NetGalley of the unabridged audiobook edition of ‘The Last Tale of the Flower Bride’ by Roshani Chokshi. The audiobook is narrated by Steve West and Sura Siu.

This proved a lyrical fairytale romance with Gothic overtones. As with most novels I avoided too much prior information about its plot and at first thought it was going to be a straightforward fantasy or even about vampires given language and initial descriptions of its characters. Yet while myths and fairytales are important to the story, it is a more grounded tale that demonstrates the power of myths and how they can effect lives and relationships.

The Bridegroom is a scholar of myths, a man who believes in fairytales. He meets and marries a beautiful, mysterious heiress named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. They settle down believing that they will live happily ever after. However, Indigo had extracted a promise from her bridegroom that he would never pry into her past. Well, you can’t get more of a fairytale promise than that!

The Bridegroom is especially drawn to the myth of Melusine, who had extracted a similar promise from her husband, who broke her trust and lost her. One sees similar stories throughout world mythology including the myth of Eros and Psyche

When Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is dying, the couple returns to her childhood home, the House of Dreams. It’s not long until the bridegroom finds himself unable to resist looking into Indigo’s past, especially when he learns of Azure, Indigo's dearest childhood friend, who had disappeared many years ago without a trace.

The narrative moves between the present as the bridegroom slowly uncovers his wife's secrets and the past charting the relationship between Indigo and Azure. The girls are obsessed with faeries, seeking ways to attract their attention hoping to be taken into the Otherworld. Indigo believes herself to be a faerie child stranded in the human world. It is all quite dreamlike and completely understandable. If this was a film one would expect it all to be soft focus shots as the girls dance in floaty dresses in the woods and do rituals to attract the Fae. Naturally the situation turns darker as they mature.

Roshani Chokshi’s writing is beautiful though is loaded with the purplest prose. Having the audiobook edition did mitigate this some as spoken aloud its flowery nature fitted the novel’s Gothic and Faerie themes.

Given the novel’s title I was delighted that the Bridegroom mentioned the Welsh story of the bride magically created from flowers, Blodeuedd, or ‘Flower-Faced’. That tale ended in tears.

With respect to the audiobook, I was pleased that there were two narrators as this delineated the time shifts and changes of perspective. Steve West read the Bridegroom’s chapters and Sura Siu read Azure’s chapters. A picture of the ethereal Indigo is build up from these dual perspectives.

This was my first experience of Sura Siu as narrator. Her voice is clear and light and captured Azure’s youth and sense of wonder. Steve West has a more mature voice, which was suitable given the Bridegroom’s age. West has narrated over 250 audiobook titles to date and I have enjoyed his reading across a number of genres. He has one of those voices that is very easy to listen to.

Overall, a novel full of wonder that I enjoyed and found satisfying, completing in a single day.

This was so beautifully dark and twisted, the writing style is poetic adding to the fairy-tale feel, you are transported to a dark reality where the lines between magic and reality blur. I felt transported in this and loved the dual timelines with the POV's, I was so absorbed and couldn't stop listening as it gets darker and darker and more secrets unravel. It did take me a few chapters to get into as the plot needs to be fleshed out a bit first but when the story gets going it truly becomes enchanting. The world building and character descriptions are also so detailed and every character, especially the females, are so well-written with so much depth yet Chokshi also keeps so much of the characters hidden. I think this will be one of the top fantasy reads of the year and I highly recommend.

Excellent gothic novel, twist on the bluebeard story with a relatable twisted teen friendship and a keen understanding of fairytales.

I hadn't read anything by Roshani Chokshi before, but after hearing a lot of praise for her YA novels over on Book Twitter, I decided to start with her adult debut, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride. The beautiful cover and the plot instantly caught my attention while browsing NetGalley, so it was a pretty automatic request. And I'm so glad I did, as this rich, dark and unique tale was SO good.

I'm honestly in love with Chokshi's writing. It is flowery and almost poetic without ever feeling pretentious or heavily constructed. The prose flows really smoothly while at the same time perfectly painting the picture and building the atmosphere. It's clear when reading that the book has a strong foundation in the Western literary canon, effortlessly weaving together the storytelling traditions of old and gothic romance elements with mystery and a dash of magical realism to create a classic tale for modern readers. I loved seeing how expertly the author played with old tropes and storytelling conventions to build an engaging plot and deeply flawed, difficult characters. I particularly liked the choice to reverse traditionally held roles, with Indigo being the centre of the story and the keeper of dangerous secrets, while her husband The Bridegroom remains the unnamed narrator seeking to uncover her mysteries. It was a refreshing take on classic fairytale characters (think Bluebeard) in their original, dark versions. There are also multiple references to these stories throughout, which added a layer of depth to the story.

The story is told in dual POV and in alternating timelines: in one, we follow The Bridegroom in the present as he starts being curious about his wife's past and decides to look for answers as they visit her childhood home; in the other, we follow Azure, Indigo's best friend from childhood who mysteriously disappeared, to watch the two girls grow up in the House of Dreams. Both storylines were great, each adding something to the story until the whole picture became clear. Hints were dropped throughout and the foreshadowing was very well crafted, but I still didn't put all the pieces together until the end. The Bridegroom was somewhat less full as a character compared to the female ones, but it felt like a deliberate choice (much like keeping him nameless) and worked well within the story. We still get to see and understand rather a lot about him and his past, although Indigo and Azure remained far more interesting to me. Listening to the audiobook, Steve West was a marvellous narrator, really helping to bring those gothic vibes through, which massively improved my experience of the Bridegroom's chapters.

Now the female characters are where this book truly shines. They were richly drawn, complex and flawed in a way that is hard to come across (or at least, I haven't really recently - if you have any recommendations, please tell me in the comments!). The relationship between Indigo and Azure was fascinating, even if deeply toxic, and it was easy to understand their attraction to the faerie world and what they call the Otherworld. Their coming-of-age story is rich with subtext and really shows what it means to be a teenage girl on the verge of adulthood in a complicated, and sometimes very dark, world. Feelings take centre stage in this book, the ones that are expressed and the ones kept hidden, love and obsession intertwining until it is hard to recognise where one ends and the other begins.

I could talk about this book for a lot longer, but I won't to avoid spoiling it all. Safe to say that, even in February, this is already a strong contender for best read of the year. Now I'll have to catch up on all of Chokshi's other works!

Having read Roshani Chokshi before I was confident that I'd enjoy the writing style in this novel. She writes in intricate detail and the dark fairytale vibes this story promised were definitely in her wheelhouse.

The narrators of the audiobook are both excellent. There's a gravitas brought to the Bridegroom that I think I needed. Azure inhabits the teen voice well - the heightened emotions and tough decisions are well-wrought. Definitely recommend the audiobook.

Initially I thought this was a straight-up fantasy where the fairytale elements were real. Having finished it I am now enjoying the liminality of the story and how I think it can be read both ways - as being about a true otherworld and also as a dark advertisement for what can happen when we get caught up in myths of our own making. How what shimmers at first can turn ugly and what appears one way could be a mirage built from desperation.

Essentially we have a wife with secrets and an unnamed husband known only as the Bridegroom. A mysterious old house and a secret from the past. All the ingredients needed for a fascinating story that leans on fairytales, and other myths with hints of the gothic - the Bridegroom has shades of Rebecca - living in the shadow of someone his partner loved first and also never being given a name.

I enjoyed this a lot and look forward to whatever Chokshi writes next.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Publishers for the audio book of The Last Tale of The Flower Bride.

Rating: 3.5

I found The Last Tale of The Flower Bride intriguing. The premise had potential and I liked the dark gothic-ness around the story.
I felt the story and the writing were good and painted the picture perfectly. It's very atmospheric and it's characters are somewhat dark and mysterious. It's a gothic fairytale full of a tragic, cruel and dark reality.
There's a reason why this novel has a trigger warning at the beginning.

I found the narrator of this audiobook a bit hit and miss. The voice is hard to get used to and I felt the female character parts did not fit his voice that well as it was hard to distinguish between the characters. - suppose that's not his fault though.

3.25*

I read The star touched Queen and loved the author's writing. It was what is called lyrical and eloquent and brought alive the world of the story in my imagination; made it vibrant. That's why I was excited to read this one. While the prose was as wonderful here too, it was a bit too much and at the cost of the real story.

There was a confusion in my mind as to what genre this story really belonged to because while the blurb promised a mystery/thriller revolving around a marriage full of secrets, I found it to be more of a magical fantasy based on faeries and folklore until it wasn't that either!

Indigo Maxwell-Castenada is the bride who is also an heiress and a person with secrets she does not want her husband, a history scholar only known as the bridegroom, to ever pry into. Right there we know what has to happen for the story to move forward! When the couple has to go back to Indigo's childhood home that is known as the House of Dreams, her husband inadvertently at first stumbles onto what might be the secret she is hiding.

I love stories within stories, especially where ancient tales are related to what's happening in the book I'm reading and I can see and savor the connection. The tales woven into this story were wonderful and the best part of the book for me.

Sometimes I struggled to see the relevance of what preceded these tales; the lessons or conclusions that we were supposed to draw and which somehow led to what was coming after. There was also, possibly, too much of what can be termed flowery writing or embellishment which I didn't think was needed. It only served to lengthen the story and make it quite slow in parts. Also, there was not really a point where all the pieces seemed to click or a main theme seemed to become clear. One question that remains for me is about the house and what role it really played. There were only hints but everything seemed incomplete.

I actually thought at the end that if the story had been more tightly told, it would have been a much better read. I'm not sure if it was the author's intention to leave the interpretation of certain core things to the reader's imagination or if I didn't get it completely. That's something I'm not fond of , not knowing if I fully understood! It's not open to interpretation which I get but not comprehending what was true and what was not itself!

Towards the end the tale did redeem itself and surprise me and so I'm glad I did finish it; something I contemplated not doing halfway through it. I realize that I had certain expectations and so may have been more disappointed than if I hadn't.

The fact that I was listening to the book also contributed to me completing it. The narrators were both fantastic and imbued life into the characters. If you like magic and Fantasy and descriptive writing and don't go in expecting this to be a thriller as advertised, you might like it more than I did.

Thanks to Netgalley and HarperAudio for the advance copy of the audiobook in exchange for a totally honest review.

2.5/5 stars
Although I haven't read Roshani Chokshi's YA books yet, I like her MG series (Aru Shah). Because of this, this book became one of the most anticipated books of 2023. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with it.
I partly blame the marketing for not liking it, because everywhere it is defined as fantasy, but I think this book is magical realism. The two styles can indeed be similar, but in my opinion, this book is magical realism, not fantasy. This book's writing style is typical for magical realism, and I don't like it. I don't read in this style at all anymore, because I didn't like these books, so if I know this, I'm sure I wouldn't read this book.
My second main problem was with the narration. The female narrator was good, but I didn't enjoy the male narration. I didn't have a problem with the narration itself, but rather with the voice of the narrator. I don't know why, but the sound gave me the chills and I just couldn't enjoy it. That's why I liked the second half of the book better since he only appeared there a few times.
These two reasons contributed to the fact that I was very bored with the book. While I was looking for yarns for chrochet, it went on in the background, but I couldn't just listen to it alone. I'm not saying that the book is bad, because I don't think it is, but it wasn't for me. The writing style was magical realism-y, it was not tangible. I felt the atmosphere was more depressing than dark or gothic. The characters weren't created for me either, although I think they were created like this on purpose. Azure was too naive and stupid for me. Indigo's character was well written, but I don't like these kinds of characters, and I usually avoid books with gaslighting. The groom didn't have any characteristics besides curiosity, but I think that was the goal since he didn't even have a name (if I remember correctly).
What I like was the ending. Because of that, the book left a much more positive after-feel. I really liked the twist, I didn't predict it.
If you don't mind magical realism, I think you'll love this book. I've only heard good things about it, just me and the book didn't fit in this case.

The prose was beautifully written and engaging. The narrators did a good job setting the gothic tone of the story. However, I did get a little bored in places. And, I also guessed the ending about halfway through. But I still enjoyed listening to this as an audiobook.

This book was fantastic, I love dark gothic fiction and fairytales and this book ticked all the boxes for me. Beautifully written and atmospheric I couldn't put it down. My first book from this author and I cannot wait to read more.

There are a lot of triggers in this book so please look them up if you need to.

I would highly recommend this book.

This was wonderful! Lush and dark with so many references to other fairy tales and folk lore. I wished I'd had a copy in front of me so I could highlight them all. It's perfectly gothic with a good twist at the end and explores toxic friendships. I loved every minute of it and the narrator really added to the lush tone of the novel.
Already a favourite of the year!

Haunting, poetic, romantic horror. The story draws you in to fairytales and you find yourself pulled in to its own with dark results.

I was so excited to receive an early copy of this audiobook. The audio is fantastic - I love the narrators. So easy to listen to and they really bring the story to life. I loved the story it is like a complex tapestry of stories all interwoven and you never know where it will end. As you read through, you learn more about our lead characters and the mysteries that unfold.
Heart breaking, moving and a story that will stay with you once you finish

I had strange the dreamer vibes from the writting and think this will definitely be a top book for 2023! Make sure you read it. Thank you netgalley and Hodder and Stoughton Audio for letting me listen early in exchange for an honest review!

This book sounded really interesting and I was so excited to get to it but I was quite disappointed. I spent to beginning not really knowing what I was listening to which sadly left me feeling a bit unenthusiastic about listening to the rest. I would however recommend the audio if you like the story. The narrators really helped with the dark vibes of the story and did a brilliant job with their characters.