Roshani Chokshi

A sumptuous, gothic-infused story about a marriage unravelled by dark secrets, a friendship cursed to end in tragedy, and the danger of believing in fairy tales—the breathtaking adult debut from New York Times bestselling author Roshani Chokshi. . . . 
Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. He was a scholar of myths. She was heiress to a fortune. They exchanged gifts and stories and believed they would live happily ever after—and in exchange for her love, Indigo extracted a promise: that her bridegroom would never pry into her past.

A Novel

Last Tale of the Flower Bride

Megan BV

She saw straight to my naked hunger and smiled. Her chair scraped back as she leaned across the table. The flames danced; candlelight gilded her skin. She became a question, and the answer she saw on my face made her close the space between us and kiss me. 

In her kiss lay wonders—the humming of firefly wings and the secret of alchemy. On her tongue was the ghost of roasted plums, forgotten poems. I was so entranced that I almost didn’t notice when she bit down. When I pulled back, her teeth looked rusty.

 And only then did I realize she’d drawn blood.

This book is good at capturing the dark/ high stakes vibes of fairytales and myths. 

“And what waits for us in the end? When you survive all my tests?” she asked. She rose then, guiding me to her. “Tell me. Now.”

 “Bliss,” I said. “Bliss eternal.” 

After that the city and all its glitter were lost to me. In that second, I knew I would love Indigo forever. 

A marriage cannot live on honest midnights alone.

I should have known what would happen when we crossed the threshold of the House of Dreams. I knew all the tales. I understood the texture of enchantment.

Boothby

 about the time period: We have a mention of a cell phone!! 

When were people using clunky Nokias? The 90s???

Her phone went off and Indigo groaned. We did not bother with cell phones until recently. They were ugly and bulky... They’d even gone so far as to send her the latest contraption toted by all the teens on the mainland: an insect-red Nokia with a stubby antenna. Indigo glared at the device.

Cloudface

"Indigo," I call out, but there is no point. 

She is already beyond me. I am simply the thing that marks the journey, that which is left behind to bear witness. 

It just occurred to me that this book has swapped the usual gender roles that occur in gothic literature. That’s neat lol.

What was Indigo? She was my bride, and she was my love, but there was something of the inhuman that clung to her. A grace and indifference that struck me as alluring one moment and alien the next.

Azure's growing realization that a lot of Indigo's "magic" is just that she's super rich...

I missed the easy wonder that came with living with Indigo. When I tried on her pigeon’s-blood ruby earrings, I could see where they had come from, the outline of spired palaces crouched in mist and lavish green mountains. When I slept on a pillowcase of raw silk, I dreamt of colorful tents and horse musk, the dusty roads that bore its name.

In my mother’s house, there was none of that. There were trips to the library, documents to be faxed, research over the cost of college programs, and the endless fine print of applications. On this side of the world, there were no pigeon’s-blood rubies and raw silk pillows, no gilded books beside a chest of drawers bought from the palace of a guillotined viscount.

The difference was clear: in the Otherworld I would want for nothing, whereas in this world there was nothing I couldn’t want.

Taryn

I may have entered her world that they, but soon she became all of mine. 

Last Tale of the Flower Bride quotes

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