At the House of Dreams, the bridegroom learns about a childhood friend that Indigo had. Her name was Azure and she disappeared at the age of eighteen. The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is told in two perspectives: the bridegroom and Azure. Azure is about ten years old when she moves in the neighbourhood and becomes friends with Indigo. She is unhappy in her life. Her mother is weak and jealous. She is in a relationship with a man much like her. Azure has not felt loved or at home for a long time and finding a friend in Indigo and an adult in Tati who loves her changes Azure’s life. Like metal attracted to a magnet, Azure is caught up in Indigo’s dreams and hopes and together they discover a place of magic, the Otherworld. The gothic atmosphere of this fairy-tale romance, mixed with heartbreaking tragedy, creates a story that hovers between fantasy and illusion. It begins with an enchantment and ends with its breaking. In between, a dream becomes a nightmare—until they both wake up. Chokshi's adult debut is recommended for lovers of gothic romance, magical realism, and stories where fairy tales come true, especially when they shouldn't." - Library Journal What an enchanting tale! I annotated, highlighted and adored it. Will you be giving this a read? Add The Last Tale of the Flower Bride to your Goodreads shelf.

But she saw something in me. Something that turned her kiss into a knife that cut me free from the dark.” Much in the way fairy tales are easy to relate to and superimpose the messages over our own lives by using archetypal characters and narratives, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride sort of superimposes itself over the genre by incorporating many recognizable archetypes to reconfigure them for its own purposes. ‘ Fairy tales are the purest and simplest expression of collective unconscious psychic processes,’ Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz writes in The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, ‘ they represent the archetypes in their simplest, barest, and most concise form.’ In this way it is able to dive directly into a sharp, psychological horror by striking at our purest fears of selfhood. Is the person closest to you betraying you and is your whole identity being built around a lie?

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The secret to everlasting love was fear. Fear tethered love in place. Without the terror that came from imagining a life without your beloved, there was no urgency in loving them.’ There were also allusions to major plot twists so maybe it is really Azul who is acting as Indigo which would explain why the lady in the lobby would call her Azul. Also, the hair with the teeth could be how that spell was achieved. Ron Rash is renowned for his writing about Appalachia, but his latest book, The Caretaker, begins ... Chokshi liberally sprinkles breadcrumbs throughout her telling of the many recurring symbols, imagery, and motifs of traditional fairy tales: abusive parents, princesses, keys, apples, rings, glass houses, towers, forests, jewels, and riches. I’m really loving this so far. I like the author’s other work so I thought I would. I’m loving the Bluebeard vibes but with a gender-switch and that wife being the one with a secret.

I was thinking a lot about Bluebeard, and how his wives who met their tragic ends remain unnamed and only the villainous character is remembered. In many ways, Flower Bride is a genderbent version of that tale, so I wanted to keep the tradition.

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

The secret to everlasting love was fear. Fear tethered love in place. Without the terror that came from imagining a life without your beloved, there was no urgency in loving them.”