I have since learned that marriage is nothing more than a spell strengthened by daily ritual. The spell requires libations: mundane musings hoarded and pored over, the repetition of small dismays, the knowledge of how your spouse takes their coffee. Marriage asks for that crust of time you were selfishly saving for yourself. Marriage demands blood, for it says: Here is what is inside me, and I tithe it to you.” A circle is a fixed infinity. Even the way it looks when it’s held up to the light is curious, as if it’s a portal to some place of mystery and your choice to wear it means you’ve allowed your marriage to be a threshold to the unknown. And yet, even in the unknown, there is a demand of mutual trust.”

I wouldn’t say any part of writing this book was fun , per se, especially after emerging from the joyous world of Aru Shah…but it was hard to leave the House of Dreams. Every time I wanted to stop, some new detail appeared. A shadow, a corner, a story. Even when grotesque, the process of discovery is always exhilarating. One of our favourite questions here on the Fantasy Hive: which fantastical creature would you ride into battle and why? As the bridegroom explores the House of Dreams, Azur's tale unfolds in the chapters in between. The House of Dreams has witnessed a lot of secrets, and it has some secrets of its own. tw/cw: loss of a loved one, extreme nightmares, a lot of blood depiction + drawing blood, gore, abuse, domestic abuse, child abuse, child neglect, child abandonment, gaslighting, animal deaths, human deaths, murder, mention of child death, kind of brief mentions of dieting/eating a very specific way, bullying, cheating, codependency, suicidal ideation and thoughts, drugging, pedophilia (very weird things being said, the child being scared/constant state of fear at home, creepy and unsettling vibes every scene with intention for more, and then at 17 years old unwanted touching/brushing past + maybe more/set up to be more… this is a hard trigger warning, but it is a constant thing in the book that is very hard to read so please use caution)This is my first time reading Chokshi (I tried reading The Gilded Wolves a couple years ago but couldn't get into it - might revise that, actually), and I was enchanted by her talent. A tale of damaged souls and broken hearts, it begins as all fairy tales do with “Once upon a time…”

It really has an eerie start and not knowing a lot of things as of now really adds to that. As of now, I don’t really know what to thing of it yet. I’m a bit thorns because a lot is still quite confusing, but at the same time I’m really intrigued by all that I’ve read. Darkly gorgeous and utterly entrancing, Chokshi’s adult fairy tale is as deadly as any fable of old; the lush, glittering prose and haunting mystery gilding a story sharper than a huntsman’s blade.” Do you have any theories about this secret Tati speaks of? Do you think it’s relevant to why Indigo is adamant the Bridegroom must not pry into her past? 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!

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. 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? The other POV is clearly the story the author wanted to write. And... idk, I don't care about contemporary fiction at all. It feels similar to a dark take on Bridge to Terabithia, but with layers and layers of toxicity thrown in. Please look up trigger warnings. The ones I always return to and find something new are the tales of “Savitri and Satyavan,” “Bluebeard,” “Eros and Pysche” and “Orpheus and Eurydice.” The characters are obsessed with fairytales-- researching them, talking about them, pretending to live in them, confusing their memories with them, cosplaying them for games, etc. They mention fairytales SO MUCH in this and, as someone who genuinely loves fairytales, it got on my nerves.