“These violent delights have violent ends.”

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong was such a phenomenal read so I felt so incredibly blessed and absolutely thrilled to receive the ARC for Our Violent Ends - thank you so much Simon Teen for sending it to me!

As I write this brief review, I have tears in my eyes. I didn’t think anything to live up to These Violent Delights, but really I shouldn't be surprised, Gong absolutely outdid herself. I laughed, I fell in love, and I cried…a lot. This book broke my heart in the most beautiful ways - it was an absolute masterpiece.

You are all in for an absolute treat so make sure you’re ready for November 16th!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

I’m in pain. Like physical pain as I’m writing this review at midnight, minutes after I finished the eARC of Our Violent Ends so graciously provided to me by the publisher.

I adore this duology. I have nothing but gilded words to say about this sequel, and I love it even more than I loved the first book – and I LOVED the first book. The first book meant a lot to me in terms of content and author. When These Violent Delights released, Chloe Gong, the author was in her senior year of an education at UPenn. As a young asian who was breath taken with stories and classics at the time, it meant a lot to me that she was an immigrant and an asian and most of all, a young woman. That alone was enough to spur me to putting These Violent Delights at the top of my list when it came to book recommendations. If you have ever reached out and asked for something to read, I have without a doubt recommended this to you at some point.

And so when it was announced that the ARCs for Our Violent Ends was out, I was scrambling to get my hands on it. I needed to see how this story ended, this beautiful heartbreaking story of two dreamers in a city of nightmares, holding their love to their bleeding broken chests, hoping without a hope that someday they would end up happy. This story of betrayal and blood and violence needed to be completed for me. I needed to see it end.

Our Violent Ends is a beautiful madness, a love letter to Romeo and Juliette and also Shanghai. It’s a raging work of a debut author talking about privilege and pain and the value of life and birthright, and reckless hurtful first love. It’s sad and it’s hopeful all at once. Are sadness and hopeful different emotions? I can’t even tell anymore.

This book grabbed me by the neck about halfway through and then ruthlessly dragged me across a banging ending of civil war, gang fights, betrayal and hope, and I loved it. It’s so well thought out, with every character staying true to themselves in a story I haven’t seen before. It’s a retelling, but it’s a retelling like nothing I’ve ever read before.

I found myself, at times, forgetting this was even based on Romeo and Juliette. The characters of TVD and OVE are so well fleshed out, bold in their own rights that I often don’t attach them to their more iconic origins. These two kids constantly shoulder the burdens of their city on their shoulders, it’s easy to forget that they are indeed kids. Just two kids, tripping over their own messy emotions.

Pre-order Our Violent Ends right now. If you liked These Violent Delights, you aren’t even a smidge prepared for Our Violent Ends. These violent delights have violent ends indeed… because the world will break, and the world will fall, but alongside everything, there has to be love- eternal, undying, enduring, and most of all, violent.

There’s something about the way Chloe gong writes that speaks to me. Obv can’t reveal much but I can guarantee that if you enjoyed the first you will LOVE this one. Her writing is so good. The story is so dark and has everything. It plays out perfectly and the love and the tension and the gore and the monsters and the violence and the imagery. I’ll stop. It’s so good.

I preordered this already and recommend you do too.