A Romeo-and-Juliet of 1920s Shanghai: rival gang heirs and former lovers must work together as a madness kills their city.
- Score
- 76.1
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- multi
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Readers consistently praise the evocative, richly cinematic worldbuilding of 1920s Shanghai and Chloe Gong's lyrical prose, calling the setting the book's greatest strength. The gruesome mystery at the centre — victims driven to self-destruction — is widely described as compelling and original. The most common criticism is that the central romance feels emotionally underdeveloped in book one: readers understand Juliette and Roma love each other, but rarely feel it on the page, with limited banter and backstory. A divisive cliffhanger ending frustrates many, though it drives readers straight into the sequel.
Read it if
- · Readers who love historical fantasy with political intrigue and a rich, non-Western setting
- · Fans of Romeo and Juliet retellings that subvert rather than replicate the source material
- · Those who prioritise lush prose and atmosphere over fast-paced romance
Skip it if
- · You need a slow-burn romance with strong emotional pay-off in book one
- · Graphic self-harm imagery (clawing at throats) is a hard stop for you
- · You dislike cliffhanger endings that leave major threads unresolved
If you liked this
- · For fans of Six of Crows but with a Romeo and Juliet backbone
- · Like Daughter of Smoke and Bone but set in colonial-era Shanghai with gang warfare
- · For readers who loved The Gilded Wolves' historical opulence and ensemble cast
In this series
Part of These Violent Delights — read in order:
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