Review

DNF – I didn’t finish this book. I read about a third of it.

Madalina and Inessa are identical twins and heiresses to an insignificant kingdom of shadows and rain. The king, their politically conniving and murderous father, has sent Inessa, the Machiavellian twin, to marry Prince Aeric, heir to a powerful throne. Madalina, gentle and retiring, prefers to tend the morbidly blood-thirsty grave flowers in their garden. One day, the ghost of Inessa appears to her: she is dead, and stuck in purgatory. Madalina must revenge her so she may find peace. Madalina is sent to marry Prince Aeric instead – although her mission (it’s complicated) is to kill him post-wedding. He seems at first to be a wine-sodden party boy. But is there more to him than meets the eye?

*

The cover of this book is really appealing, with great dark vibes, beautiful flowers & dramatic velvet bell sleeves. Love. Look at that tagline! “Marry the prince. Then kill him.” Fabulous! And it has four stars on GoodReads, which is pretty good. Unfortunately, I had to quit reading because, while competent, it’s simply too meh to hold my interest. I believe that good readers quit books. It’s the only way to get to the ones you actually like. So I resolve to quit more.

Grave Flowers starts with an author’s note about how she’s referenced Hamlet – please, please, don’t point these things out. It’s cringey. Use a Hamlet quote as an epigraph or something instead. Then there’s a fairly pointless prologue about the birth of the twins. Then a tedious ‘extract’ from ‘A Guide to Grave Flowers’ (more extracts appear throughout). Finally, we hear Madalina’s first person voice, which is a lot better than what’s come before it, but not entertaining enough to make up for it: from the cover, I thought she might be a fabulously Slytherin antihero, but no, she’s mild and boring. The pace is slow, the worldbuilding is thorough but tedious and it has a confusing cast of thousands. I just didn’t care enough about any of the characters to continue with it.

I wanted to like this, but alas… I didn’t. Your mileage may vary!

Content info (to where I got up to): ghosts, murder, political assassinations.

*

Krause, A. (2025). Grave flowers. Walker Books.

Images are used on this blog post under the “Fair dealing for criticism or review” provision of the Commonwealth Copyright Act, 1968.

I read this novel for free thanks to a school library — support your school library by visiting & borrowing. It’s especially pleasing to have borrowed a book when you realise you don’t like it – at least you didn’t buy it!