“Our Violent Ends” from Chloe Gong

If you haven’t read These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong or my review of it, then you might want to do that before reading this post because SPOILERS. Obviously. It’s the second book of a duology, so these things are to be expected.

You have been warned.

So, Our Violent Ends picks up shortly after the end of These Violent Delights with our spin on Romeo and Juliet. Roma is seething mad at Juliet because he still thinks Juliette killed Marshall and it is unforgivable. However, that’s not really the case. Marshall is alive and in a safehouse, but no one can know or it will out Juliette’s sympathies.

Someone is blackmailing both the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers so the fathers order Juliette and Roma to work together to solve the case. They clearly don’t want to, but they do as they are told. And of course, they aren’t done with the monsters spewing insects either. There are now multiple monsters. Kinda problematic for them.

There is a whole lotta drama that I won’t get into, but Roma and Juliette play their enemies to lovers to enemies game a few times over. There are a couple places where I thought it was going to go down like Shakespeare, but that would be to easy. Although it does mirror the source material in the end we all know is coming, it isn’t quite what I expected it to be.

The ending of Our Violent Ends is actually quite delightful, from how they die (shocker), to who the blackmailer is, to who is controlling the monsters this time… it’s all much more entertaining than the first book. I don’t think it fully lives up to the hype, but it’s still good. Chloe Gong is an excellent writer and yes, I am jealous.

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