Star Daughter

To me, a transportive story makes you study your hands at the end of a read… it makes you wonder if some glitter from that world you left behind has somehow caught on your fingers. Star Daughter is that kind of transportive read. The mythic, South-Asian Otherworld Thakrar constructs is vast, imaginative, and an utter delight for the senses.

The novel tells the story of Sheetal, born of a star mother and a mortal father. She’s spent her life trying to suppress her celestial identity in order to live a “normal” life. But when an accident lands her father in critical condition, Sheetal must embrace her star identity and enter her mother’s world in order to save him.

This is the kind of questing tale that has the familiarity of a well-worn, beloved blanket, told in a voice that is pure poetry. I finished the book feeling almost jet-lagged, my senses so tangled up in the world Thakrar built that reality felt blurry by contrast. At a time when travel is limited, this book is the journey we need—and I hope you too close the book convinced that some stardust souvenirs will fall onto your lap.

The daughter of a star and a mortal, Sheetal is used to keeping secrets. But when an accidental flare of her starfire puts her human father in the hospital, Sheetal needs a full star's help to heal him. A star like her mother, who returned to the sky long ago.

Sheetal's quest to save her father will take her to a celestial court of shining wonders and dark shadows, where she must take the stage as her family's champion in a competition to decide the next ruling house of the heavens—and win, or risk never returning to Earth at all.