This thrilling end to Chloe Gong’s explosively popular duology does not disappoint. Our Violent Ends serves as both tribute and counter-culture to its source material, giving us all the tragedy but none of the predictability from all the retellings that came before it.
The year is 1927, and Shanghai teeters on the edge of revolution. After sacrificing her relationship with Roma to protect him from the blood feud, Juliette has been a girl on a mission. One wrong move, and her cousin will step in to 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 seen with her debut novel, Gong does not disappoint, keeping the tension of Juliette and Roma's struggles high all throughout the second installation of their story. The book opens with a series of back and forths between deceit, trust, and downright hatred. It left me both intrigued and, to be honest, slightly confused. The switch between Juliette and Roma's violent and romantic tensions was both fast and brutal, and came so often that at times I found myself asking why this aspect of their relationship had to be drawn out for so long. I'm normally not one for endless drama of the same kind, nor one for a constant "I trust you again, wait no I don't" pattern, but Gong convinced me of the necessity of structure, because once I got to the major reconciliation, it all felt worth it.
In These Violent Delights, I found myself struggling to believe Juliette and Roma's feelings, but Gong's opening acts, where she basically drags her characters through the mud, managed to fully convince me. It was the confusion of the characters, the continuous lies and head-heel turns that made me really feel their frustration with each other, and their desperation for one another's safety.
Just like last time, the side characters did not disappoint. Marshall was hilarious, Celia was empowering, Rosalind showed us a new perspective, and Benedikt, well, when he finally got his act together and confessed, I just about screamed in relief. Even Tyler, who was so hateable in the first book, is given a sense of nuance here that I hadn't expected. I'd never have thought I'd feel sympathy for someone I so despised previously. Celia's journey, too, made me smile through and through. Getting to watch her shed her old life and step into the new one, the one she chose and sought out herself, filled me with such brightness and longing.
Juliette and Roma's end was devastating, but the rewriting of their passing into a selfless act really rounded out the uniqueness and brilliance of Gong's vision. Despite the deaths of the main characters, it was really happily ever afters of everyone else that left me loving this book. It balanced everything out perfectly, and the fact that none of the queer characters were killed off was certainly not lost on me. Breaking from the source material and allowing for the survival of such lovely supporti characters gives the story a bittersweet ending, one more powerful than a downright tragedy where everyone is dead. Gong may know how to tear your heart out, but she also knows how to give you hope.
Chloe Gong is the New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights and its sequel, Our Violent Ends, as well as Foul Lady Fortune. She is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she double majored in English and international relations. Born in Shanghai and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, Chloe is now located in New York pretending to be a real adult. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok under @TheChloeGong or check out her website at TheChloeGong.com.
Foul Lady Fortune, which follows Rosalind four years after the events of Our Violent Ends, releases in September.
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