Hello everyone!
I am back with another book review, The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi.
The story follows Maya, a princess of Bharata. She is cursed, bringing death and destruction with her wherever she goes. When her father, the Raja, arranges a marriage for her as a political move, she learns he wants to sacrifice more than just her happiness. Soon she finds herself married to the king of Akaran, Amar and with power and a voice in her life. But Amar is hiding things. Maya can tell that her new kingdom is very different from her home in Bharata. She becomes swept up in a world of death, reincarnation and past lives.
First of all, the most prominent element of this book that I want to talk about is the writing style and diction of Chokshi's book. It has been a while since I have read a book with such flowery language. And I'm not sure yet how I felt about it. For the most part, I was able to read the book no problems. But there were a couple of moments where I felt like I had to get through so much text just to get to the main thing that was happening. I didn't hate the writing style, and in fact, there were many times when I liked it but it was just something that, for better or for worse, stood out to me as being unique and different.
I felt like once I got into the story, things picked up. But there were some times where I felt like I was being jerked around. There's a plot twist and then there's two different storylines pieced together. I almost felt like this book had three divisions, before in Bharata, after in Akaran and a third in part two of the book. I had a hard time keeping the events straight when things changed so quickly. The world is so unique but the story moves so quickly that by the time you finally get caught up with what was happening, we're on to a new world in a new part of the book.
This all being said, I did enjoy the book quite a bit. It had almost an Alice In Wonderland vibe and I thought the storyline was really unique and interesting. The synopsis doesn't even begin to cover what goes on in this book, but in an effort to keep things spoiler free, I won't get too into it.
I really liked Maya's character. I think in YA we get a lot of "strong, independent" female MCs who are only strong and independent until the guy comes along and then everything falls to pieces. But I liked that throughout everything, Maya stuck to her values. She didn't immediately trust Amar just because he said she should and she didn't let him control her. I thought that her character was really well done, especially in that sense.
There were a couple things I predicted - well ok, I had inklings about but they were true. I don't think those instances took away from the story, and to be honest, many of them seemed quite blatantly set up for the reader to pick up on, so I don't think I can dock too much for it.
I wasn't in love with the one-sided insta-love in the beginning. I felt like Maya stood her ground well enough, but Amar immediately loved her. This is explained later in the book, so I guess I can forgive it, but I was still annoyed with it when we first met it and didn't know what was going on.
Overall, I liked some parts more than others.