Minor spoilers ahead!

    “These Violent Delights” by Chloe Gong is perfect for anyone who loves action, romance, betrayal, and enemies to lovers. It’s the perfect fantasy book that doubles as a Romeo and Juliet retelling.

   It’s 1926 in the city of Shanghai, China. Juliette Cai and Roma Montagov are the children of the heads of two rival gangs who want control over the city. Juliette is the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang. They are powerful and almost unstoppable. The only ones who lay in their way are the White Flowers. Another gang that Roma Montagov is the heir of. 

     Roma Montagov is behind almost every plot and scheme that the White Flowers execute. He also happens to be Juliette’s first love and first betrayal.

   In this book, a monstrous situation leaves people unable to stop themselves from clawing at their throats. People start whispering and spreading rumors about a monster lurking in the shadows waiting to spread its contagion. 

   The tense situation leads to one that could be even tenser. Juliette and Roma must work together without their guns to stop the monster. If they don’t there won’t be anyone in the city left to rule. 

   This book opens with a scene depicting a scene in which a monster is crawling from the depths of the Huangpu River. The monster will leave members of both gangs dead.

   The monster’s contagion is leaving people unable to control their hands and eventually ripping out their own throats. Unfortunately with the political madness that’s happening in the city, everyone is ignoring the monster and mysterious and gruesome deaths. 

   When Roma’s sister Alisa is infected Juliette is dead set on the fact that she and Roma should work together to get to the bottom of the madness, even though their families are refusing to share information.

   As Roma and Juliette start working together they utilize their trusted friends and family to get more help. Juliette only trusts two people out of her whole family. Her cousins Kathleen and Rosalind. Roma is accompanied by his cousin Benedikt and fellow White Flowers member Marshall. 

   Roma and Juliette’s investigation is centered around a mysterious man who calls himself the Larkspur. He claims to everyone that he has a cure for the madness. The two suspect Communist Zhang Gutai of working with the Larkspur. When the pair goes to investigate they encounter his assistant Qi Ren. They suspect nothing of him and continue on with their search of the Larkspur and his supposed cure.    Roma and Juliette run around all over the city doing all sorts of crazy things trying to uncover the truth. Everything proves a failure until the end of the book when everything is revealed. 

   Read the book to find out how it ends!