The Bookworm: Our Violent Ends, by Chloe Gong.

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

After sacrificing her relationship with Roma to protect him from the blood feud, Juliette has been a girl on the warpath. One wrong move, and her cousin will step into usurp her place as the Scarlet Gang's heir. The only way to save the boy she loves from the wrath of the Scarlets is to have him want her dead for murdering his best friend in cold blood. If Juliette were actually guilty of the crime Roma believes she committed, his rejection might sting less.

Roma is still reeling from Marshall's death, and his cousin Benedikt will barely speak to him. Roma knows it's his fault for letting the ruthless Juliette back into his life, and he's determined to set things right - even if that means killing the girl he hates and loves with equal measure.

Then a new monstrous danger emerges in the city, and though secrets keep them apart, Juliette must secure Roma's cooperation if they are to end this threat once and for all. Shanghai is already at a boiling point: The Nationalists are marching in, whispers of civil war brew louder every day, and gangster rule faces complete annihilation. Roma and Juliette must put aside their differences to combat monsters and politics, but they aren't prepared for the biggest threat of all: protecting their hearts from each other.

As previously mentioned, I've never found the original Romeo & Juliet to be romantic in the slightest, so this retelling was never going to be a home run for me.

However; the gang rivalries and the scheming, infighting & plotting within each one, mixed together with the fantastical elements, the mystery and the political atmosphere of the time & setting is so interesting, that I was sucked straight into These Violent Delights and couldn't wait to dive into Our Violent Ends...

In Our Violent Delights I could ignore the romantic angle as it was little more than a B plot in the background, but that angle is pushed closer to the front in Our Violent End. Juliette also comes of as a immature, self-centred, spoiled mafia princess playing don at times too - at certain points I did find myself wondering if Tyler actually would make a better leader, whereas in Our Violent Delights I was always rooting for her to succeed in becoming the future leader as I fully believed that she wanted the best for everybody, but now I'm seeing her as self-absorbed and just looking out for herself & Roma for large chunks of the story. 

My biggest problem is that I just don't understand the romantic angle with the leads; the pain, irreversible destruction and betrayal they've caused each other is just too much for me to be able to believe that they could ever actually still love each other & wish to be together - the monsters running around are more believable to me. I just can't get my head around it - maybe this is more of a neurodiversity thing, or just my age?

As a result of my not connecting with the story as much as I did with the first half [These Violent Delights], I felt that this book could have been a bit shorter since the pacing isn't as strong; there are a few parts we're nothing is happening apart from Juliette moping, then too much is crammed too closely together to leave a big impact on me. I don't want to get into anything that can count as a spoiler, so I'll just say that I saw most of the twists coming, and that a couple of the secondary characters deserved much more fleshing out.

In summary: great ideas and great writing for the most part, yet parts of the book still kinda felt like a chore to sludge though, plus I just didn't 'get' parts - I'm clearly too old & jaded to be part of the intended audience. I don't intend on buying the volume with 2 novellas which take place after the events in this book - I've decided how the story ends in my head and I'm happy to end things with Roma & Juliette there.

I'll still be looking closer at what else Chloe has written as I love her imagination, but this particular read was underwhelming which dissapointed me because the first half of the duology was so strong - I feel very misbalanced now. 

Kindle: £4.99

Audio: free trial 

Hardback: £12.10

Paperback:  £8.27