The Book?
My, what a way to end a duology to conclude the story of Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai.
As the second and final book within the series, Our Violent Ends picks up months after These Violent Delights with a blackmailer threatening both the White Flowers and Scarlet Gang and a new monster wreaking havoc around Shanghai. Once again, Roma and Juilette find themselves having to team up, this time as a request by their dads to figure out who is behind this.
Through the twists and turns, the person who was behind the monsters and the catastrophe that inflicted Shanghai is of a greater scale than in These Violent Delights. Because of this, I do think Gong wrote Roma and Juilette’s estranged relationship due to Juilette’s major decision in the last book quite nicely from their inner thoughts to their decisions within the book. I also enjoyed hearing how the other characters were dealing with the new epidemic such as Marshall, Tyler, and Rosalind.
I was only disappointed with the ending and how Roma and Juilette stopped the threat. It was expected that since it was a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, that death was coming but I wanted something different to happen in order to conclude the series. For that, I give it a 3.5.
The Dish?
The dish that I’d pair this up with is The Bonding Tool’s Lanzhou (Ma Baozi Niu Rou) La Mian. I can imagine Benedikt and Tyler being a big fan of eating this in the restaurants around Shanghai. It’s also known in English as Lanzhou beef noodle soup with the main ingredients being beef, vegetables, noodles along with peppercorns and red chilli flakes to add more of a flavoursome punch to it. Feel free to take a look at the recipe here, originally created by AFAR.
0
0