Reviews with content warning for Violence - These Violent Delights

Romajuliette's alright but I loved Juliette as a character, she's so fun.

Also this book has great white british man representation. I feel like the content here is really accurate to their culture.

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lujisa's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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bookwyrmmads's review

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Okay not going to lie, I ALMOST DNF-ed this one. I knew going in that there was going to be quite a bit of violence, but what I was NOT prepared for was the graphic descriptions of gore. I feel like that went a bit too far sometimes, but admittedly I’m not much of a dark romance or horror kinda person so maybe I’m just sensitive to it. The descriptions of the way the disease spreads alone (no details here, but EW) almost made me shut the book, but I got far enough in that I figured I’d go ahead and push through. Luckily for me, the last 25% or so of the book really picked up! I enjoyed finally getting to some of the romance and the heist/mind game/social politics aspects that came to fruition. Despite my initial hesitations, the ending of this book made me desperate to know the end of this story so book 2, here I come!

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onceuponherbookshelf's review

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dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The story itself is good, but it felt like it dragged on a bit. I enjoyed the characters. The romance was meh (could possibly be better without it honestly). And the challenges in the story were really cool to me. Also a little creepy!

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m4rtt4's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Secret Shanghai is officially one of my favourite world's I've ever visited, and I'm glad to know the story doesn't end here. I enjoyed almost everything — the monster plotline could have been executed a little better — but I'm only taking 0.5 stars off for that. My absolute favourite thing in addition to the dynamic between Juliette and Roma was

everything about the brain-infesting insects (I'm a biology student...), though I must say the science stuff also felt a bit off and/or too modern for the time, for example the term 'viral' wasn't really used until the 1940s, and what were those machines in Lourens's lab, how did they work?

I need more specific answers, I'm curious — in all seriousness, I'm just a nitpicking nerd. Nevertheless, Gong has done an excellent job researching and creating all this, big kudos to her <3

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kylosten's review against another edition

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tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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jeyjeyyy's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Fun book, nothing stood out exactly but I definitely found it interesting.
I really liked the historical references and it did teach me a lot about society in Shanghai at that time. However, the fantasy plots did not make a lot of sense to me. I also did not particularly care about what was happening. The romance also felt a bit bland, it was really great at the beginning but I found its ‘resolution’ a bit too easy. Kind of felt like the characters lost most of the fun aspects of their personality about halfway through… What I wanted was angst upon angst and enemies and hatred and tensionand a LOT more romance. I did not really get that. This sounds iind of bad but I wnated it to be more… toxic? I mean this is Romeo and Juliet !!
Not to say I didn’t like the book, it was just not my favourite.
Also REALLY loved the side characters, especially Kathleen and Marshall and Ben. Excited to see more of them.

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danie_faye's review

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challenging mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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