Blog Tour: The Twin Stars by Bridgette Portman [Review + INTL Giveaway]

Welcome to my stop for the blog tour for The Twin Stars by Bridgette Dutta Portman! This tour has been organized by Lola’s Book Tours and runs from 26 July till 8 August. Click the banner below to view the tour schedule.

Book Details

Title: The Twin Stars (The Coseema Saga #1)
Author: Bridgette Dutta Portman
Genre: Fantasy
Age category: Young Adult
Release Date: 6 July, 2021

Blurb (from Goodreads)

A magical journal. A world savaged by its own suns. An evil prince. A princess in hiding. And a teenage girl who learns to be the hero of her own story.

Sixteen-year-old Olive Joshi has obsessive-compulsive disorder, and can’t stop worrying about hurting the people she loves. She finds refuge in writing about Coseema, a magical princess on a distant planet. Coseema is fearless, confident, and perfect – everything Olive thinks she’ll never be. When she falls through a portal into her own unfinished story, Olive finds herself in a world in peril: double suns scorch the land, the brutal Prince Burnash seeks supreme power, and Coseema is nowhere to be found. Together with her friends – a bold poet, a cursed musician, a renegade soldier, and an adventurous girl from the desert – Olive will have to face her deepest fears to find the hero in herself.

Links: Goodreads || Bookbub || Amazon

Review

Thank you to Lola’s Book Tours for providing me an ARC of this book in exchange of an honest review. This does not affect my opinion in any way.

The Twin Stars is an immersive portal fantasy that will transport you to a whole new world. Our main character is Olive, a teenager with an OCD. She accidentally (or not?) gets transported into her own half-finished story she wrote in her journal (hence the separator graphics), and learns that the world and the people she created are not quite what she made them to be.

It is, in essence, the classic “falling into a storybook” tale, but once you read it you’ll understand what I mean when I say that it was so much more than that. The intriguing and unique worldbuilding captivated me right from the beginning, and even more so as the story progressed. The descriptive writing is certainly laudable, it created a vivid imagery of everything from the story in my mind’s eye.

The plot was quite decent too, though it could have been better. One thing I noticed was the stark absence of sub-plots. Almost everything that happened contributed to the main plot. A little more complexity could have really added to the story.

Let’s talk about the characters. The main character was nicely crafted and her character development in the story was superb. I was able to connect and relate to most of the characters, especially supporting characters like Jambol and Nestra, and the well-written side characters were another thing I liked about this book.

Overall I’d recommend The Twin Stars to those looking for themes of adventure, survival and even lowkey found family.

My Rating

★★★★ (4 stars out of 5)

About The Author

Bridgette Dutta Portman is an author, playwright, and teaching artist. Dozens of her plays have been produced across the United States and overseas. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Spalding University, as well as a PhD in political science from the University of California, Irvine. She is past president of the Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco and is currently a member of Same Boat Theater Collective, the Pear Playwrights’ Guild, and the Dramatists’ Guild. She recently joined the board of the Pear Theatre in Mountain View, CA. The Twin Stars is her debut novel, and the first of a planned trilogy. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband Deepanshu and their two young children.

Author links: Website || Newsletter || Facebook || Twitter || Goodreads

Giveaway

There is a tour wide giveaway for the blog tour of The Twin Stars. One winner wins a signed paperback copy of The Twin Stars + a custom designed journal that ties into the book thematically. Open International.

For a chance to win, enter this rafflecopter: a Rafflecopter giveaway

Do you have The Twin Stars on your tbr? Does it sound like something you’d be interested in reading? Let’s chat in the comments!