Tag: Chloe Gong

Let’s Go on a Pond-cation: A These Violent Delights-themed Virtual Tour through Shanghai with Chloe Gong and Xiaolong

CW @ The Quiet Pond2 Comments

Xiaolong the axolotl, wearing big glasses on her head, holding a suitcase, and a camera around her neck.Let’s Go On a Pond-cation is a guest feature at The Quiet Pond that celebrates and highlights worldbuilding in stories!

In our Pond-cation posts, the Pond friends and authors team up to take all of us on a virtual vacation through the real life places in books or the places that inspired fictional places and worldbuilding. Find out more information about this guest feature here.

It’s pretty clear that all of us at the Pond are huge fans of These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong. We had the honour of hosting the exclusive cover reveal and we also highly recommended the book in our review. Today though, we have Chloe visiting us at the Pond again in a new Let’s Go On a Pond-cation post, where Chloe and Xiaolong take us on a virtual vacation through Shanghai, the setting for These Violent Delights.

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Book Review: These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong – A Brutal Yet Tender Retelling of Romeo and Juliet Like You’ve Never Read Before

CW @ The Quiet Pond16 Comments

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong.

Blurb:

The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery.

A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. At the heart of it all is eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang—a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir, Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love…and first betrayal.

But when gangsters on both sides show signs of instability culminating in clawing their own throats out, the people start to whisper. Of a contagion, a madness. Of a monster in the shadows. As the deaths stack up, Juliette and Roma must set their guns—and grudges—aside and work together, for if they can’t stop this mayhem, then there will be no city left for either to rule.

CW’s Review:

I was given an ARC of this book by the author; this does not influence my opinions outlined in this book review.

How do you even begin to write a review for one of your most anticipated reads of 2020 that didn’t just exceed your expectations, but its story stabbed you in the heart, sucked the lifeforce and tears out of you, and made you ache and feel horror all at once – and by the end you wanted to thank Chloe for it?

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