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sasaboba 's review for:
These Violent Delights
by Chloe Gong
review originally posted on gr in 2021
2022 edit: This review by elisa is the best summary of my feelings on this book and then some. Everybody needs to read it. From Juliette's abuse of the working class, to the back-and-forth on whether or not this book wants to decolonize or ignore imperialism—it's worth the read. The author also said something really ugly responding to criticisms about it not being love between two Chinese people in an interview. Her response was "people would get confused" and then in the same breath said "how do you know he's not?" Like...that doesn't add up. Seeing the way she responds to anything that isn't a glowing review...I don't know. Maybe it's her youth, maybe it's her personality, maybe it's both but she definitely was not prepared in any way, shape, or form on how to deal with backlash and criticism. It's off-putting.
First, the good. I loved how unapologetically Chinese These Violent Delights was and all of the cultural and socioeconomic commentary. The toll that white colonization and imperialism was taking on Shanghai really solidified the intensity of the situation. I enjoyed the six cast of characters and appreciated their personalities and motives. All of the racism and sexism that Juliette discussed is part of my day to day and I'm glad others like me will be able to see themselves reflected in popular YA books. I liked seeing the intersection of Juliette being a Chinese girl living in America during some of her most formative years. The detail about how Juliette got her name and her continued identity struggles with being too western for Chinese people and being too Chinese for western people really hit home. I also appreciate that the pinyin forced me to brush up on my Chinese. If anyone complains about needing footnotes for the Chinese language/culture, please reevaluate your view on publishing and take a look at this thread.
Unfortunately, nothing else lived up to my expectations. Please know that nobody is more disappointed in my rating than I am. I was so excited for this book. I feel like I'm the only one who didn't have a good time despite my best efforts. Maybe I set myself up for disappointment because I already don't like Romeo and Juliet, but the source material's retellings are usually a hit for me. These Violent Delights read less like a whirlwind romance set in 1920's gangland Shanghai and more like rival Scooby Doo groups running around solving mysteries and getting chased by monsters.
These Violent Delights should have been a standalone. Everything was slow to develop—Chapter 17 really needed to be Chapter 3 or 4. It took 341 pages for the first enjoyable interaction to happen between the protagonists. I wasn't hoping for much. I just craved interesting dialogue between anyone—anything to get away from the ~350 pages of the same tension and adjective dumps. A couple of pages after that, the story went back to a painful drag for the next ~60 pages. There was an unnecessarily large amount of purple prose, filler paragraphs, and an absurd amount of detail that didn't need to exist. For example, every type of speech was described as accented and sometimes it'd dive into paragraphs on how the accent sounded. It was fine the first couple of times, but it should've been over and done with at least for the main characters like we do not need this! Get on with the story.
The social commentary felt fleeting at times. For example, a character would ruminate about their light skin privilege for a paragraph and then never talk about it again. Like there was no point. We never see how people are affected by colorism in Shanghai—an issue that often goes unaddressed in Asian communities. I wish Chloe Gong created a brown character in the main cast of six characters to help her illustrate the social commentary instead of just telling us, "I'm lucky I'm light skin." I know she doesn't have that experience herself so she might have been worried about writing it and missing the nuance it deserves, but it feels a little disingenuous to randomly talk about an issue and then never revisit it. It happens with multiple subjects, ranging from sexism to colorism. I'm also really sad that this isn't an intraracial romance between Asian characters. Don't get me wrong, Roma is nice. It's just rare to see love between Asian characters in western mainstream media. My heart really yearns to see more of it.
Kudos to Chloe Gong for writing this series while in school during such a tough time. I appreciate the ideas and the representation, but These Violent Delights felt like a book of incomplete ideas. It was a collection of Tumblr social commentary essays regarding identity politics couched between glacial pacing and heaps of flowery prose. The last 1/6th of the book was the only redeeming quality, but it's not enough for those few pages to be really good after crawling through the mud for 400 pages. The ping pong-ing between different political ideas and out-of-place Mystery Machine chases took away from what I thought was going to be a forbidden romance and gang-city politics. The last 40 pages were fun, fast-paced, with incredible twists, and neverending intrigue. I just wish this were applicable to the whole book. BIPOC stories like this are necessary and I appreciate Chloe Gong for the humbling experience and reminder that BIPOC creators should be allowed to be mediocre in these spaces. It made me temper my excitement for overhyped content. I just hope not to be disappointed again.
2022 edit: This review by elisa is the best summary of my feelings on this book and then some. Everybody needs to read it. From Juliette's abuse of the working class, to the back-and-forth on whether or not this book wants to decolonize or ignore imperialism—it's worth the read. The author also said something really ugly responding to criticisms about it not being love between two Chinese people in an interview. Her response was "people would get confused" and then in the same breath said "how do you know he's not?" Like...that doesn't add up. Seeing the way she responds to anything that isn't a glowing review...I don't know. Maybe it's her youth, maybe it's her personality, maybe it's both but she definitely was not prepared in any way, shape, or form on how to deal with backlash and criticism. It's off-putting.
First, the good. I loved how unapologetically Chinese These Violent Delights was and all of the cultural and socioeconomic commentary. The toll that white colonization and imperialism was taking on Shanghai really solidified the intensity of the situation. I enjoyed the six cast of characters and appreciated their personalities and motives. All of the racism and sexism that Juliette discussed is part of my day to day and I'm glad others like me will be able to see themselves reflected in popular YA books. I liked seeing the intersection of Juliette being a Chinese girl living in America during some of her most formative years. The detail about how Juliette got her name and her continued identity struggles with being too western for Chinese people and being too Chinese for western people really hit home. I also appreciate that the pinyin forced me to brush up on my Chinese. If anyone complains about needing footnotes for the Chinese language/culture, please reevaluate your view on publishing and take a look at this thread.
Unfortunately, nothing else lived up to my expectations. Please know that nobody is more disappointed in my rating than I am. I was so excited for this book. I feel like I'm the only one who didn't have a good time despite my best efforts. Maybe I set myself up for disappointment because I already don't like Romeo and Juliet, but the source material's retellings are usually a hit for me. These Violent Delights read less like a whirlwind romance set in 1920's gangland Shanghai and more like rival Scooby Doo groups running around solving mysteries and getting chased by monsters.
These Violent Delights should have been a standalone. Everything was slow to develop—Chapter 17 really needed to be Chapter 3 or 4. It took 341 pages for the first enjoyable interaction to happen between the protagonists. I wasn't hoping for much. I just craved interesting dialogue between anyone—anything to get away from the ~350 pages of the same tension and adjective dumps. A couple of pages after that, the story went back to a painful drag for the next ~60 pages. There was an unnecessarily large amount of purple prose, filler paragraphs, and an absurd amount of detail that didn't need to exist. For example, every type of speech was described as accented and sometimes it'd dive into paragraphs on how the accent sounded. It was fine the first couple of times, but it should've been over and done with at least for the main characters like we do not need this! Get on with the story.
The social commentary felt fleeting at times. For example, a character would ruminate about their light skin privilege for a paragraph and then never talk about it again. Like there was no point. We never see how people are affected by colorism in Shanghai—an issue that often goes unaddressed in Asian communities. I wish Chloe Gong created a brown character in the main cast of six characters to help her illustrate the social commentary instead of just telling us, "I'm lucky I'm light skin." I know she doesn't have that experience herself so she might have been worried about writing it and missing the nuance it deserves, but it feels a little disingenuous to randomly talk about an issue and then never revisit it. It happens with multiple subjects, ranging from sexism to colorism. I'm also really sad that this isn't an intraracial romance between Asian characters. Don't get me wrong, Roma is nice. It's just rare to see love between Asian characters in western mainstream media. My heart really yearns to see more of it.
Kudos to Chloe Gong for writing this series while in school during such a tough time. I appreciate the ideas and the representation, but These Violent Delights felt like a book of incomplete ideas. It was a collection of Tumblr social commentary essays regarding identity politics couched between glacial pacing and heaps of flowery prose. The last 1/6th of the book was the only redeeming quality, but it's not enough for those few pages to be really good after crawling through the mud for 400 pages. The ping pong-ing between different political ideas and out-of-place Mystery Machine chases took away from what I thought was going to be a forbidden romance and gang-city politics. The last 40 pages were fun, fast-paced, with incredible twists, and neverending intrigue. I just wish this were applicable to the whole book. BIPOC stories like this are necessary and I appreciate Chloe Gong for the humbling experience and reminder that BIPOC creators should be allowed to be mediocre in these spaces. It made me temper my excitement for overhyped content. I just hope not to be disappointed again.