Review - Our Violent Ends (These Violent Delights, #2) by Chloe Gong

 

 

Title: Our Violent Ends (These Violent Delights, #2)

Author: Chloe Gong

Pages: 513

Publisher: Hodderscape

Release Date: 16th November 2021

Blurb from Goodreads:

The heartstopping follow up to These Violent Delights, an imaginative, alluring retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in 1920s Shanghai.

 

Goodreads | Storygraph | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Bookshop

 

 

 

 

 My Review:

 -Contains spoilers for book one, These Violent Delights-

*I received an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley*

Roma and Juliette haven't seen each other since saving Shanghai from the monster and its madness. Roma saw Juliette murder Marshall, his friend, and wants revenge. He doesn't know that Marshall is actually alive and well, and that Juliette orchestrated the scene to save Roma being killed himself.

Juliette's position as heir of the Scarlet Gang is still precarious, with her cousin Tyler ready and eager to take over the moment Juliette makes a wrong move.

When a new monster appears in the city, Roma and Juliette will need to work together to save their home from the risk of further madness as well as the Nationalist threat inching closer - that is, if they don't kill each other first.

Having enjoyed the first book, I was intrigued to see what would happen next, especially given that it ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Juliette was a complex protagonist - she was relatable and wanted to protect her friends, family and home, but she wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty. I did feel sorry for her given that she'd had to sacrifice her relationship with Roma, and that she constantly had the threat of Tyler waiting for her to mess up so he could take over as heir.

While I did like Roma, I didn't feel that I connected with him. I liked a lot of the side characters, including Kathleen, Alisa, Marshall and Benedikt. Tyler was an interesting character who, while I didn't like him, I understood his motivation. I would have liked to have seen Dimitri fleshed out more, as he felt very two dimensional to me.

The politics were interesting, as was the setting of 1920s Shanghai.

The plot was mostly enjoyable, but the pacing was off for me and around 70% through I did start to lose interest, which meant that I became less invested in what happened, and I wasn't as emotionally impacted by certain scenes as I should have been. There were several things that I didn't see coming, but because I wasn't gripped, I wasn't very shocked by them. I felt that the book could have been at least 100 pages shorter as there was some two-ing and fro-ing that seemed unnecessary.

I'm disappointed that I didn't enjoy this more.

Overall this was a mixed read.