‘The Last Tale of the Flower Bride’: I wish this had worked for me

You said: “If you pry, you’ll destroy our marriage.” But oh, my love, you lied.

I’m disappointed to say that I didn’t enjoy The Last Tale of the Flower Bride until the final 15-20%, and even then, it never redeemed itself from a dreary, bland start and characters that I found it impossible to care about.

We start off with the bridegroom’s POV as we learn how he and Indigo came to marry, and it is a painfully instantaneous romance that holds no chemistry or depth whatsoever. Instead of character development, the narrative was comprised primarily of one fairytale reference after another, and I felt like I was being beaten over the head with blunt metaphors. As someone who typically loves purple prose, this was a rare experience in which the writing veered far past whimsical and into the territory of downright pretentiousness for me.

After a bit, the story begins to alternate between the bridegroom and Azure, his wife’s childhood friend, and while the plot developing within her segments was far more interesting, I struggled with the fact that the writing did not differ in any way whatsoever between their inner monologues.

On top of the previous issues mentioned, I feel obligated to mention how predictable the twist was; I literally guessed it within the first 10% of the book, even down to the outline of how it played out in the end. I typically don’t knock off stars for predictability because I know I’m the type of reader who guesses twists often, and that doesn’t always act as a negative against the writing; still, in this case, it only added to my boredom. I would have set this book aside early on, if not for the fact that I became determined to see if I had guessed correctly.

It genuinely hurts me to write this review because The Last Tale of the Flower Bride held so much potential and I think, in another writer’s hands, it could have been a perfect read for me, but the writing is what held this story back in every possible way. I can fully understand how this book has been popular with so many readers in the brief time since it was released, and I expect it will find a great deal more fans from here on, but unfortunately, I’m not one of them.

Thank you to the publisher for the review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.

Indigo, Azure, and Tati are BIPOC (no specific mentions of their ethnicities, one brief mention of Azure being uncertain of her ethnicity)

— destiny ♥

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