The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

Summary: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.

Thoughts: What a magnificent book this was to read! The writing was beautiful and captured my attention right off the back. All the characters were interesting and the lore, absolutely adored it. So much emotion was poured into this story that you could feel it through the words. So, why am I giving it 4 out of 5 stars? It was beautiful, yes, but it was too beautiful. I literally got lost in the words. Sometimes I didn’t even know exactly what was happening at certain moments and I felt like the flowery language was unnecessary at different points of the story. Like, she would simply be walking down the hallway and the language would drift off in a completely different direction for something so mundane. Constantly, it took me out the story and I hated that because I need to be continually immersed for me to fully enjoy the book. Even though I loved these unique characters, Maya was the most irritating character of them all. She claims that she’s cautious and she seems that way, but then she does things that are the complete opposite. It doesn’t fit with her character and it’s clear these things happened out of pure convenience to move the plot forward. I don’t like when authors feel the need to do that. There’s different ways you can move the plot along, but making a character that shows caution do the exact opposite makes it unbelievable. Overall, it had an amazing story and I enjoyed my time reading it.
Ratings: 4/5 stars