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    Star Daughter
    Star Daughter
    Star Daughter
    Audiobook13 hours

    Star Daughter

    Written by Shveta Thakrar

    Narrated by Soneela Nankani

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    *Chosen as a 2020 Kids’ Indie Next pick * A Locus Reading List recommendation * An Andre Norton Nebula Award Finalist*

    “Shveta Thakrar's prose is as beautiful as starlight.”—New York Times bestselling author Holly Black

    This gorgeously imagined YA debut blends shades of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust and a breathtaking landscape of Hindu mythology into a radiant contemporary fantasy.

    The daughter of a star and a mortal, Sheetal is used to keeping secrets. Pretending to be “normal.” 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.

    Brimming with celestial intrigue, this sparkling YA debut is perfect for fans of Roshani Chokshi and Laini Taylor. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateAug 11, 2020
    ISBN9780063013360
    Author

    Shveta Thakrar

    Shveta Thakrar is a part-time nagini and full-time believer in magic. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Enchanted Living, Uncanny magazine, A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, and Toil & Trouble. Her debut young adult fantasy novel, Star Daughter, was a finalist for the 2021 Andre Norton Nebula Award, and her second and third novels, The Dream Runners and Divining the Leaves, take place in the same universe. Her adult fantasy novella, Into the Moon Garden, is available as an original audiobook from Audible. When not spinning stories about spider silk and shadows, magic and marauders, and courageous girls illuminated by dancing rainbow flames, Shveta crafts, devours books, daydreams, travels, bakes, and occasionally even plays her harp.

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    Reviews for Star Daughter

    3.5/5

    226 ratings13 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Fun and adventurous storyline. Complex character relationships, and vivid world building. Diverse characteristics, and relatable subject matter. The story was easy to follow and fun to read! I had a great time falling in love with Sheetals character. It is also very cultural and educational!

      4 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Didn't like the main character at all and felt she lacked proper depth. Found most of the plot to be melodramatic. The worldbuilding is very good, though, and I liked the audiobook narrator.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      what i want is to listen to it for free because i've not read it i'm very upset about this i'ts sad
    • 2/5
      I heard absolutely no praises for this book.
      I don't think it was bad but I also feel like the author was trying to cram a lot into some of the scenes.

      did I hate this book no absolutely not....it was different but it's not one I would just HAVE to read again.

      I feel like we all thought this would be a fantasy fantasy in a whole new world but it is very much just earth as we know it ....and I'm gonna assume the moon (the place has a name but it just feels like the moon to me)


      My biggest complaint is because half the time I couldn't stand the main character, but that's just because indecisive people in book just annoy me, pick something roll with it you know what you gotta do. DO IT!

      And I can get the bare minimum in a relationship and live with it but this one.... Just feels forced to me. Idk

      But again it's not awful I enjoyed all the little stories inside the book.
    • 5/5
      The descriptions in the book were palititable, filled with such rich detail. I haven't listen to a book with this much curiousty in a long time!
    • 4/5
      When she and her best friend and her auntie found night market and loved when and her best friend found the way to the stars realm Jawas very well written I enjoy
    • 1/5
      Another audiobook on here that is totally messed up, complete sections missing areas out of order, how is this even possible!

      The story seems good, but Scribd somehow messes up so many audiobooks and it’s hard to rate cause I don’t want people thinking that the platform issues are a reflection of the story.. no Scribd audiobooks are often unlistenable and it just seems to be getting worse and worse!
    • 1/5
      This book is not easy to follow. Not sure who would enjoy this, maybe a child in India.
    • 4/5
      Good story, but kind of like Disney's Mulan, when the main character gets offered everything she she says she wants, then crys about it. No wonder men think women don't know what they want. I thought this was going to be an inspiring story of a young girl developing her inner strength and confidence, but it wasn't.
    • 1/5
      This book is not what I was expecting it to be. At first this book was a little intriguing, talking about the stars and such, but the more I read, the more I didn't love it. I was having a hard time figuring out the actual plot of the story, and I feel like Sheetal was the only focus, and everything else was sort of a background thing that was just there to be a full scene. Plus I felt like it also really focused more on Sheetal's relationships, especially the one she had with Dev. It felt way more 21st century focused than star-world focused. It was also hard for me to craft the scenes in my head since I have never been around the culture this story was based around. For me it was only interetsing enough to finish this book, but not enough to impress me.
    • 4/5
      I read this as part of my Norton Award finalist packet.This is a fun YA read that draws from Indian culture and mythology to bring a new spin to the familiar teen-forced-into-competition trope. The book follows Sheetal, a teen planning to take the PSAT while trying to hide her heritage as a star. Her celestial mother abandoned the family years before, leaving Sheetal with her dad--who she loves dearly, even as they clash as teenagers and parents do. With her 17th birthday days away, though, her usual black dye won't stay in her hair, she finds out her boyfriend knew she was a star and was literally using her as a muse (she is not happy), and then in a flare of anger, her star powers surge and she almost kills her dad. Now she needs to ascend to the sky to find out how to cure him before it's too late.The cultural and mythological aspects of the book were fantastic. The first chapters hooked me right away with the desi family drama, and the drama among her mother's family brings in higher stakes for sure. The whole trope of a teen-forced-into-competition is wearing thin for me, though. I also was frustrated by how many plot points dragged on simply because people couldn't TALK. Yeah, people really do that, but it wears thin in reality, too. Still, it's a fun read and I can definitely see why it made the Norton ballot.
    • 4/5
      I listened to this audiobook over the course of a few days and I was completely enamored. Star Daughter was an interesting foray into a bit of Hindu mythology that was both rich and intoxicating! The world building was robust and extremely ethereal. The writing was expressed in prose both subtle and divine. The narration was eloquent. Soneela Nankani narrated and she was very adept at conveying which character in the pantheon of personas was speaking at any given moment. Her subtle inflections made listening to her voice, for hours on end, extremely enjoyable. She managed to vocally paint the unique cast in vibrant hues allowing them to shine brilliantly through her words. She also showcased their flaws in gradients of beautiful gray making it worth every stolen moment I had with this (audio)book.To be honest, the names were a bit confusing to remember at first but some have wormed their way into my brain and are now living there... permanently. It is almost 2 weeks since I experienced Star Daughter's radiance and still those unique names remain. I believe this book will have that same affect on a variety of genre loving audio/bibliophiles... yes, that means you too... unless you don't like Fantasy... then you're in the wrong place.Overall:I guess I am the outlier here because I really enjoyed this book. I am convinced that every time I think of the constellations or a burgeoning star, I will think of Sheetal and her protégé boyfriend Dev. Bottom line: This book got mixed reviews on GoodReads and I'm a bit stumped. I usually use those ratings as a gage for whether or not I should add a book to my TBR . It might sound snobby but I don't usually go for books with ratings below 4 stars. BUT in this instance I happened to pick up Star Daughter when it was first released and took a shot in the dark and gave it a chance. I'm glad I did because I ended up disagreeing with its low rating. Was this book amazingly, mind-blowingly awesome? No. Will it expand your mind in significant ways? Also No BUT it will expose you to a piece of another culture's mythos while coaxing you to dwell in the realm of the Fantastical for a bit. I say, if you're on the fence about picking this one up, go for it... you'll have a good time.~ Enjoy
    • 3/5
      Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got this book in one of my Owlcrates.Story (3/5): This whole story is about Sheetal losing her ability to hide that she is half-star and accidentally hurting her father with her star abilities. As a result she is forced to hunt down her mother and the other stars, for help saving her father. The story was a bit all over the place. There are parts of the story I enjoyed, like the magical market and some of the mythology included. However, I ended up mostly just skimming the last 25% of the book because I found the story boring and poorly constructed.Characters (3/5): I never really engaged with Sheetal or any of the other characters in this book. They were hard to get to know and fairly one dimensional. Sheetal seems very naive and somewhat selfish, as do all of the adult characters in this novel. Sheetal’s crush is just very fan-girlish and I didn’t see a lot of actual affection between her and her boyfriend. All the characters were just kind of “blah”. Setting (3/5): The setting was okay. Pretty typical YA setting the first part of the book and then Sheetal journeys to the star realm. There is some nice magical description of the star realm but despite this I still had a really hard time picturing the setting. It was okay but nothing exciting.Writing Style (3/5): This whole book was pretty mediocre and somewhat disappointing for me. I loved the aspects of desi culture and the idea of a character that was half-star. However, the whole story is very immature. The main character is immature, the whole plotline around Sheetal having to win a talent competition is really immature, and the writing was immature. There wasn’t really anything here technically awful, but nothing that piqued my interest and made me want to read more by this author either. I should also mention there is a ton of desi terminology in here I did not know, which made the book even harder to read. It would have been nice to have a glossary of these terms in the back of the book.My Summary (3/5): Overall this was an okay book, the best part by far was the beautiful cover design. There are some promising elements in here around desi culture and mythology. I also love the idea of having a character that is half-star struggling with her human vs celestial side. However, the execution was severely lacking. The whole thing is immature and unengaging. There was a lot of potential for an amazing story here but it just wasn’t realized.