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These Violent Delights
496 pages
A glittering, blood-soaked fever dream of rival gangs, monstrous shadows, and a romance that cuts like a knife.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into a glittering, blood-spattered fever dream where danger lurks in every shadow. The atmosphere is thick with the smoke of 1920s Shanghai, blending the intoxicating glamour of flapper dresses with the visceral grit of gang warfare and creeping body horror. It moves at a brisk, cinematic clip, pulling you through a labyrinth of political tension, colonial corruption, and a monstrous mystery. Yet beneath the gore and gunfire lies a beating heart of pure, unadulterated angst. The prose is lush and dramatic, perfectly capturing the electric, knife-edge tension between two heirs bound by a bitter blood feud. It is an absolute feast for readers who devour enemies-to-lovers romance, morally gray protagonists, and stories where love and hate are separated by the thinnest, deadliest line.
- Mood
- glamorous
- dread-soaked
- shadowy
- tense
- Tone
- dramatic
- fierce
- cynical
- romantic
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- star-crossed yearning · burdens of legacy · corrosive blood feuds · colonialism and corruption · the monsters within
- The writing
- Lush and cinematic, balancing sharp, gritty historical details with sweeping, dark romanticism.
- The arc
- Moves from bitter, guarded resentment through a tense, reluctant alliance into desperate, tragic yearning.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave high-stakes enemies-to-lovers angst wrapped in a glamorous, blood-spattered historical mystery.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- gore and body horror
- self-harm
- colonialism and racism
About the book
The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery.
A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. At the heart of it all is eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang—a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir, Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love... and first betrayal.
But when gangsters on both sides show signs of instability culminating in clawing their own throats out, the people start to whisper. Of a contagion, a madness. Of a monster in the shadows. As the deaths stack up, Juliette and Roma must set their guns—and grudges—aside and work together, for if they can’t stop this mayhem, then there will be no city left for either to rule.
Description from Open Library.
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