Mundie Moms

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

The Star Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi / Book Review



By: Rouhani Chokshi
Published by: St. Martin's Griffin
Released on: April 26th, 2016
Purchase from: The Publisher Amazon | B&N
Add it to Goodreads
Rating: 4 Stars 
*I received an arc of this book from the publisher, in exchange for my honest review

Fate and fortune. Power and passion. What does it take to be the queen of a kingdom when you're only seventeen?

Maya is cursed. With a horoscope that promises a marriage of Death and Destruction, she has earned only the scorn and fear of her father's kingdom. Content to follow more scholarly pursuits, her whole world is torn apart when her father, the Raja, arranges a wedding of political convenience to quell outside rebellions. Soon Maya becomes the queen of Akaran and wife of Amar. Neither roles are what she expected: As Akaran's queen, she finds her voice and power. As Amar's wife, she finds something else entirely: Compassion. Protection. Desire...

But Akaran has its own secrets -- thousands of locked doors, gardens of glass, and a tree that bears memories instead of fruit. Soon, Maya suspects her life is in danger. Yet who, besides her husband, can she trust? With the fate of the human and Otherworldly realms hanging in the balance, Maya must unravel an ancient mystery that spans reincarnated lives to save those she loves the most. . .including herself.

A lush and vivid story that is steeped in Indian folklore and mythology. The Star-Touched Queen is a novel that no reader will soon forget.

An enchanting debut! With passion, romance, fate, a rich mythology, and a vividly detailed world, Chokshi takes her readers on an unforgettable journey. With a beautiful mix of folklore, fairytale and fantasy, this is a book I enjoyed reading. 

Chokshi wastes no time thrusting her characters right into Maya's world. It's one full of action, desire, romance, and self discovery. Roshani's writing is simply mesmerizing. From her character and world development, down to the way she tells his story, everything she wrote was richly detailed, written with prose, and had a purpose for being in the story. I really enjoyed that this story was told in two parts. The first part is the romance between Maya and Amar, and the second is Maya's self discovery of who she is, and all she's truly capable of doing. 

Maya is a character I liked from the get go. She's grown up in a brutal world where she was thought little of. In fact, thanks to her horoscope, she's really more of an outcast among her family. Maybe it's because she was shunned, and is a loner, or maybe it's because I saw the fire within her, I couldn't help but root for her from the moment I met her. She poses an inner strength I really admired. She become so much more than what others viewed her as, and said about her. I loved watching her grow into this fierce, strong women. 

It wasn't surprising that she'd connect with Amar, the demon boy, and outcast in his own right. I really enjoyed the way Chokshi wrote his character, and introduced him into the story. Like Maya, there's so much more to his character than I thought, and I loved how I slowly got to know him. I liked the way he and Maya connected, and how he helped her see that there's so much more to the world around them both with the seen and the unseen. I loved their passion, and romance. I wasn't the biggest fan of their insta-love, though somehow everything made sense in the way their relationship developed. 

While there were some similarities to the romance in this story to a previous book I read, the world building, and the crafting of this story were fascinating, and unlike anything I've recently read. I loved the story's Indian folklore and mythology. It was so fascinating and enchanting. It tied into the this story's brutal, yet beautiful world perfectly. Usually a story needs it's characters to tell the story, and capture a readers attention, but that's not the case with this book. Chokshi's blend of folklore, and mythology are what captured my attention, and told this story beautifully. 

Overall this is a fascinating debut. I really enjoyed being swept away with Chokshi's beautiful storytelling. I may not have been the biggest fan of the romance, which is a huge part of this story, but there are a lot of other elements that told this story, that I did enjoy. I am really looking forward to reading more of Roshani Chokshi's books. 

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