Roshani Chokshi’s debut YA novel is bloodthirsty, strange, fragile, wonderful, and complex, integrating Indian folklore alongside fantastical elements in a thrilling read.
Book review: The Star-Touched Queen, Roshani Chokshi

stillness is a lie, my dear
Roshani Chokshi’s debut YA novel is bloodthirsty, strange, fragile, wonderful, and complex, integrating Indian folklore alongside fantastical elements in a thrilling read.
Disclosure: This review is based upon a copy provided by the publisher. No other consideration was offered. Hamlet is probably one of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays, though it’s not in strict point of fact my favourite — I’m a fan of The Tempest and Much Ado if I have my druthers. But Hamlet has become an extremely important part of the Western […]
Disclosure: This review is based upon a copy provided by the publisher. No other consideration was offered. The story of Aladdin and his lamp is perhaps one of the most well-known myths attributed to the 1,001 Nights, although in fact the story doesn’t appear in original Middle Eastern versions of the story collection, and it […]
Disclosure: This review is based upon a copy of the book provided by the publisher. No other consideration was offered, although it (the book, not the publisher) did give me a vicious paper cut. Just when I think we’re done with retellings, another one gleefully crops up, and I’m not really complaining — all stories […]
The conclusion to Sarah McCarry’s fantastic Metamorphoses Trilogy came out in July, and while I am bitter that I won’t get to play with these characters again, I’m really excited to see what she comes out with next, so it’s really more of a bittersweet sensation. Appropriate for this series, which has a very bittersweet […]
Disclosure: This review is based upon a copy provided by the publisher. No other consideration was offered. When I pulled Slasher Girls & Monster Boys out of my mailbox, I gave an involuntary squeak of excitement. It features some of my favourite YA authors, spanning those who work in a variety of genres including, of course, horror, […]
Disclosure: This review is based on a copy provided by the publisher. Someone at Penguin clearly reads my thoughts because their office kindly sent this book along at precisely the moment I was wanting to read it, thanks to the buzz building up around the title. I was promised a fascinating and compelling retelling of an […]
We all know that I have a fascination for dead things that some people think borders on the inordinate. I also love fiction featuring death-related subjects. And I particularly adore dark humour. Which would be why I love books like Six Feet Over It, and television series like Dead Like Me. They’re funny. They’re also about death and dying, but […]
As we know, I adore fairytale retellings, and I’m pretty stoked that they’re becoming a bigger and bigger thing right now, especially in the YA world. There’s much to explore in these tales, passed down and tweaked and expanded and shrunk over generations as our tastes, tolerances, and beliefs change. I love it when writers […]
Last year, I started watching, and greatly enjoying, Gracepoint, the US remake of Broadchurch. Usually I don’t much fancy remakes, as the original is often much better, and it just seems kind of pointless to water a show down to make it fit into the US television box. However, in this case, I found myself making an exception, for […]