[Review] These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

Imprint: Margaret K. McElderry Books
ISBN: 1534457690
Published: November 17th 2020
Rating: 4 stars 

In glittering Shanghai, a monster awakens. – p. 1

These Violent Delights was a tribute to 1920s Shanghai and the tumultuous changes that came with after effects of imperialism and subsequent Western influence, enmeshed with a Romeo and Juliet retelling that was violent and vicious.

Dangerously delightful, indeed.

Juliette Cai, of the Scarlet Gang, and Roma Montagov, of the White Flowers – must put family politics and past romance aside to save their city from a monster that intends to destroy Shanghai from within.

I also just appreciate how Chloe Gong just gave life to Shanghai, making it a living, breathing character in the pages. The city is representative of its people, of its problems, and of its history, and Gong really goes out of her way to show it.

The decade is loose and the morals are looser. As the West throws its arm up in unending party, as the rest of the Middle Kingdom remains splintered among aging warlords and the remnants of imperial rule, Shanghai sits in its own little bubble of power: the Paris of the East, the New York of the West. – p. 1-2

In a city not only bustling with foreigners but also native Chinese from every corner of the country, most civilians shared a language, but they did not share the same way of speaking it. Two Chinese merchants could carry on an entire conversation with each one speaking his own dialect. They didn’t need to meet in the middle. They only needed to understand. – p. 227 – 228

Look at this city. Look at the starvation that squirms under the layers of glamour.
Empires can fall in mere hours. This one is no different. Here in Shanghai, whoever shoots first has the best chance of surviving. – p. 261

The city does not know itself; it will not feel the parasites that grow upon its skin until it is far too late. This city is a miscellany of parts smashed together and functioning in one collective stride, but place a gun to its head and it will only laugh in your face, misunderstanding the violence of such intent.
They have always said that Shanghai is an ugly daughter, but as the years grow on, it isn’t enough to characterize the city as merely one entity. This place rumbles on Western idealism and Eastern labor, hateful of its spit and unable to function without it, multiple facets fighting and grappling in an ever-constant quarrel. – p. 128

The metaphor of the monster that encroaches upon the people of Shanghai and the Western forces that also encroach upon the city – these parallels had my analytical brain dissecting every line.

I loved Juliette Cai not only because this girl would not hesitate to cut a b//tch down with a knife, but because she is representative of the diaspora seen in people who are untethered and part of multiple worlds. She had been in America for several years – learned its language and its culture, and returns to Shanghai the same but different. She styles herself in a Western fashion and speaks English with ease, but white men still think of her as exotic Chinese girl, thinking themselves to be superior.

Juliette had met plenty of men like him in America: men who assumed they had the right to go wherever they wished because the world had been built to favor their civilized etiquette. – p. 23 – 24

Even her own family, the Scarlets, thought her different.

It clicked. The qipao. The Scarlet gangsters had become accustomed to shortcutting their association of her to glittering, beaded dressed and pomade in her finger-curled hair. As soon as she dressed in Chinese clothing instead, they saw right past her.
Juliette breathed in and found her lungs to be horribly tight. Could she never be both? Was she doomed to choose one country or the other? Be an American girl or nothing? – p. 143

She would bet her life savings that he only thought her pretty because she was digestible to Western standards. Her feminine beauty was a concept as fleeting as power. If she acquired a tan, put on some weight, and let a few decades pass, the street artists would not be rendering her face to sell their creams anymore. Chinese and Western standards were arbitrary, pitiful things. – p. 169

She would rather have been an outcast than admit the blood in her veins was a product of the East.
Juliette lied to think she had come down a bit from her high horse since then. The second time she return to New York, she had seen the darkness behind the glamour of the West. It was no longer so great to be a child constructed with Western parts. – p. 234

Before meeting every stranger in New York, she went through the same routine: smile, shoulders back, eyes heavy. She was light and bubbly and the epitome of the flapper girl, working ten times as hard to maintain the perception she wanted just because of the skin she wore. – p. 274

“Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. For a Chinese woman, your English is extraordinary. There is not a trace of an accent to be found.”
Juliette placed her hand on the door. When she pressed down, she felt the cold of the delicate glass seep into her bones.
“I have an American accent,” she replied dully.
Paul waved her off. “You know what I mean.”
Do I? she wanted to say. Would I be less if I sounded like my mother, my father, and all those in this city who were forced to learn one language, unlike you? – p. 317

Paul sucks (pass it on).

Also, as I have said, girl is violent and fierce.

“That’s not a necklace, is it?”
“It is not, Baba.”
“That’s garrote wire, isn’t it?”
“Indeed it is, Baba/”
“How many other weapons have you concealed on yourself?”
“Five, Baba.” – p. 161

Also, the simultaneous exertion of Western influence is acknowledged constantly in this book, and how, in turn, it impacts Shanghai and its people.

“This city is no longer Chinese.” – p. 57

Another thing I enjoyed (honestly, there were so many things) – how we can appreciate and follow with all the side characters – Kathleen, Rosalind, Benedikt, Marshall, all given their own chapters and their own arcs and I loved them all. I hate in books when you’re given such a huge cast and you have no idea who is who and don’t care about any of their plots, but These Violent Delights really gave everyone developed stories.

 This book seems fitting to read about during a pandemic, with all the talk of a vaccine and finding a cure to the madness – what relevant topics.

“Loyalty played its dirty hand, too, and it is a fickle, ever-changing thing.” – p. 216

Just as in Romeo and Juliet, the idea of loyalty and betrayal and warring families carry over, and honestly the backdrop of Shanghai just made it all the more interesting.

And this scene that broke the fourth wall made me laugh.

“Montague, really?”
“Shut up,” Juliette hissed back. “I couldn’t think of anything else and I didn’t want to pause suspiciously.”
“You’re fluent in Russian and that’s the best you could come up with?” Roma asked, flabbergasted. “What is a Montague? It sounds Italian.”
“There are Italian Communists!”
“Not in Shanghai!” – p. 229

I devoured These Violent Delights. I can’t wait for the sequel.