These Violent Delights (BOOK REVIEW)

“I was raised in hatred, Roma. I could never be your lover, only your killer.”

GODS THIS BOOK WAS GOOD
Actual rating 4.5/5

Story: 5/5
This story was a beautiful twist on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It takes an even darker tone than the tragic tale as a mystery of drugs, gang wars, colonization, murder, and monsters unfolds below our characters feet in the destructive city of 1920s Shanghai.
Juliette is the heir to the Scarlet Gang and a powerful and terrifying woman. Roma is the heir to the White Flowers and marked by his father as a traitor.
The blood feud between both gangs has caused hundreds of deaths for generations, but when both Scarlet and White start dropping dead and clawing their own throats out due to a mysterious madness Roma and Juliette are forced to work together to uncover why these deaths are occurring before it is too late.
The story was immaculate and thrilling. I was lost in this world of mystery and intrigue for the entirety of the novel as our characters slowly uncovered the deep mystery unfolding around them. This re-telling took a far more interesting approach to the forbidden love tale of Romeo and Juliet giving much more political and supernatural elements to expand on this classic.

Characters: 5/5
Every character in this book was amazing.

Juliette:
Juliette is an terrifying and ruthless woman who takes her job as the heir to the Scarlet Gang very seriously. She knows as a woman trying to inherit a gang run by men that she is at a disadvantage to keeping her family in line but she never lets that stop her for a second. Juliette does what it takes to keep her family safe even at the cost of herself. She is a deeply interesting and powerful female character that keeps you guessing about what she might do next until the very end.

Roma
Roma is the estranged son of the leader of the White Flowers cast out from his role due to an affair with the beautiful and dangerous Juliette Cai. Roma is broody, contemplative, and rational often balancing out Juliette's darker and more violent nature. He spends a lot of this book trying to bring her back from the anger and hatred she has filled her heart with after years of not seeing each other. He cares about the people around them and wants to stop the madness as soon as possible to save his dying sister from destroying herself, driving him to great lengths to find answers.

The side characters are also incredible with full arcs and LGBTQ+ representation that is properly done and lovely to watch unfold. These Violent Delights is a mixture of different races, ethnicity, religions, sexuality, and genders that make you feel like you're apart of something no matter who you are while reading it.

Writing: 4/5
The writing was also incredible with disturbingly descriptive scenes.
My only issue with the writing was that the book was a bit long for the story that wanted to be told so the pacing sometimes ended up making sequences really long when they could have been short. This made for some boring parts but nothing that took away from my overall love of this book!