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my opinion on ‘these violent delights’ by @thechloegong (a non-spoiler thread)
first, let me start off with this: if you’re reading this thread and you haven’t read the book yet, let me convince you. i know everyone loves enemies-to-lovers. well, this book is a young adult rivals-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-partners-to-lovers. i highly recommend this book :)
also, this book just came out last week and i hadn’t heard much about it before i read it. is liking it an unpopular opinion? idk. i’m definitely not the expert on books, but i really enjoyed this one, so if you wanna take a chance on my opinions, please do.
I LOVED IT. i know how cliché this is gonna sound, but it captured me from start to finish and left me on the edge of my seat. i went into this knowing it was romeo and juliet in a different setting, but it retold the story in an amazing way.
i read romeo and juliet for the first time last year, when i was a freshman in high school. the story was interesting at some parts, but the language lost me and i unfortunately didn’t have a good teacher like mr randal to fuel my love for the play.
however, i really think this book captures the thoughts and feelings of romeo and juliet that we don’t really get to explore in the play.
going into the book without knowing anything about it, i thought it was going to be just romeo and juliet in 1926 shanghai. boy, was i wrong. the characters are so complex and the story is so well written, it is its own entity.
i thought i knew everything that was going to happen in the book because i read the play, but chloe gong really took the original play and manipulated it for her own universe to the point where you actually don’t know what’s going to happen at all.
lastly, as a book-loving teenage asian-american girl, most of the female protagonists i read about are white. i loved that this was not the case for this story. the fact that it takes place in shanghai and juliette is a badass made me really happy.
i may not be chinese, but any asian representation in the media is important. thank you, chloe gong, for telling this story. i cannot wait for the sequel.
