Title: The Last Tale of the Flower Bride
Author: Roshani Chokshi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2023
Genre(s): gothic, mystery
Part of a Series: No
Rating: 
Why I Read It: Once Upon a Book Club selection
Summary: A scholar specializing in fairytales and legends marries a mysterious woman named Indigo on one condition – he never asks about her past. But when they return to her childhood home for her aunt’s last days, he realizes he needs to break his promise and discover what happened to her friend Azure. But will learning this secret not only end his marriage but his life?
Review: This has been a hard review to write. I feel like I have so many directions but I couldn’t pick one to follow.
It also is frustrating because I know I need to review the book I read and not the one I thought it should be. But this book held so much promise and I don’t think it fully lived up to it.
Honestly, I found it much like Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, especially as one main character never has a name and is just referred to as “The Bridegroom.” And he’s in a house haunted by someone who went missing with his wife who refuses to talk about her past.
(Yet surprisingly, Rebecca never receives a mention in any blurb on the book’s dust jacket).
I think Chokshi should’ve leaned into Rebecca and made The Bridegroom the only narrator. Really tease out the mystery of Azure and his own past to add tension and make Indigo seem more intriguing. Because as it was, I didn’t really see why he didn’t just leave her. There just was no connection there.
Or she should’ve really leaned into Azure’s story as there was more of a connection between her and Indigo. Just let her story play out without all the mystery that really wasn’t a mystery. At least not to me. I just figured it out. Nothing really gave away. I just knew that was how the author would progress.
However I think the Bridegroom angle would’ve been best and let Chokshi still build her gothic world of a house that felt alive but really lean into the ghosts as well.
I also think that would’ve benefitted Indigo as well because she felt too much like an enigma and like she wasn’t really a character. She felt more like a plot device than anything else. And I think that hurt the story. Azure really drove the story and I think if she was more a supporting player than the main character, Indigo would’ve felt more real.
Or maybe that was the point. Maybe she was supposed to feel like a fairy tale character. If so, I didn’t like it but maybe someone else will.
Bottom line: There’s a good story in there but the author may have gotten too ambitious.
Sex: Some. Nothing too, too graphic.
Moonlight Musing
What is your favorite fairytale, myth or legend?
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