Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)'s Reviews > The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

The Harper Collins Union strike has finally ended!

Okay, I LOVED this book! So much more than I ever expected to. However, I suspect it won't be what some readers are expecting, especially if they know Chokshi from her YA novels.

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is quite a dark sort of fairy tale for adults, and much darker than I would have expected. Similarities to her YA books include lush, descriptive prose and a love of of mythology. Otherwise this gothic novel is much grittier, more disturbing, and draws characters who are morally grey at best. It is a gender-bent Bluebeard retelling, but it is also drawing on many other dark fairytales. All as a way of talking about abuse, grooming, trauma, enmeshed relationships, and cycles of violence. It was exactly my sort of dark, gothic story with a whole lot of feelings.

We get two character perspectives and two timelines. A man who loves fairytales and is married to a beautiful but mysterious woman named Indigo who asks him not to pry into her past. But when they return to the estate of her childhood- a place where once upon a time Indigo and Azul were the closest of friends- he must decide if he's willing to risk his marriage in search of the truth.

Years past, Azure meets Indigo as a young girl and is drawn into her darkly magical world as an escape from her family life. But as they get older, she is pulled between Indigo's world and the world outside.

I won't say much more, but there are definitely queer undertones to the friendship between the two girls and in many ways the entire book is darkly seductive. It's a stunning adult debut that seamlessly weaves mythology and fairytales into this tense gothic story of love and obsession. I look forward to more like this from Chokshi!

Content warnings include violence, gore, self-harm, murder, bullying, disordered eating, suicidal ideation, grooming, domestic violence...