The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani ChokshiMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
A dark, elegant tribute to love and fairy tales.
From the beginning, the writing was flowery and over the top, and yet I loved it. I'm not normally one for words that take the long way round to say what they mean but there was something here that suggested every word had been chosen with great care and it added so much to the whimsy of the story.
This is a tale that transports; one could argue it's a contemporary tale but the mere possibility of magic was enough for me to think of this as a fantasy novel. The atmosphere is charged and all kinds of creatures watch from behind the pages, waiting.
The blurb doesn't give us much: a recently married couple, and she with secrets to hide. Him promising not to look, yet we all know the way things forbidden tend to sink their claws into our minds.
I was completely captivated.
I love fairy tales, myths and legends and this is such a beautiful hybrid of all these things. Our Bridegroom studies the tales, then suddenly finds himself swept up in one. Our Bride is mysterious and magical, and we spend so much of the novel wondering what secrets will be revealed and what will be the consequence.
Beyond the writing there is still a mystery here that needs solving, so even if the language puts you off the intrigue should keep you. A lack of wonder - or appreciation for fantasy and an untethered imagination - may see this a little overdone for you, but for my part I loved disappearing into this magical world of maybes.
This was a really enjoyable, deeply satisfying reading experience, which is a rarity for me. I'm often reading as fast as possible to suck the story from the pages (still its own kind of fun), but here I really enjoyed lingering over the phrasing and the beautiful, whimsical images they invoked.
Highly recommend if you're after a magical tale that takes you to the Otherworld and dares you to discover its secrets.
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