The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1) Review

Melissa Souza
Apr 8, 2017
2 min read

3 stars!!! This was one of my most anticipated reads for 2016 and I have to say I was pretty excited to finally get a chance to read it. Alas, my joy was rather short lived because this book left we utterly disappointed and I'm sorry to have to say this but pretty much bored. Some aspects that did capture my attention with the story was that it was a retelling of Hades & Persephone. As someone who loves Greek mythology, I was really keen to get into the premise of the novel. This combined with touches of Indian elements definitely piqued my interest. I applaud Roshani Chokshi for showing diversity in the story and sticking with it. I felt this really lent originality to the story. I also felt that her writing style was quite lyrical and descriptive. However, that's where my love for this book ends. The writing although poetic and flowery tends to make reading the story very tedious. It was just too verbose. So what we get with all these descriptive sentences is lack of worldbuiling and a very vague idea of the actual plot. The story lacked substance and had a very fleeting dream-like quality to it which wasn't appealing in the slightest. The plot tends to jump from one point to another but there's not much story progression. There's some action towards the end of the story but other than that there's nothing else to strengthen it. In addition to this, there's absolutely no character development. After finishing the book, I still don't know who Maya is besides being a girl with an unlucky horoscope. She is so cliched. I wanted the author to give me something fresh and exciting. Instead what we get is a girl who is a "special snowflake" and falls in love within two seconds with the broody male lead. And don't even get me started on the romance. There's no chemistry between Maya and Amar. Their relationship was so cold and lifeless. I thought I was going to get an epic romance. But it was nothing like my expectations and just because the characters speak so eloquently about their romance doesn't mean that a reader will get any feels. It just felt so bland. Besides this, I have to say some of the minor characters were endearing but I would have preferred to see more of Nritti's backstory. I also felt that the resolution was rather quick and rushed . I feel the author should have spent more time in actually developing this world. Considering it is set in the Mughal period, I would have liked to see how the author would incorporate magic into this era. This coupled with fleshed out characters would have made this book amazing. However, the book does have some potential. I probably would read the sequel to see if there's any significant improvements. I would recommend reading this YA fantasy if you need to read something diverse and cultural. But, don't be expected to be completely blown away, it's the usual YA trope.