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449 pages, Hardcover
First published November 17, 2020
They were vultures, all of them—the British and the French and every other newcomer. Circling above the city and awaiting the carnage so they could gorge themselves until they were full. The Russians had arrived in this country and merged forward, wishing to learn the way of things and do better. These foreigners had sailed in and grinned at the crime.
"You're the only one I trust to hold this gang together as a steady steel structure, rather than a grappling hierarchy of whims."
The waitress blinked. "Miss Cai, it's not proper for you to get your hands dirty—"
"Pass it."
She passed it. Juliette scrunched it up in her fist. In three quick, violent motions—her hand coming down on the table so hard that it made a sound—the surface was smooth and clear and shiny.
Juliette gave the cloth back. "Use your elbows. It's not that hard."
Juliette shoved her way to the front of the line. When an elderly man near the door tried to push her back, she spat the nastiest curse she could summon in Shanghainese, and he shrank like his life had been sucked from his veins.
"I was raised in hatred, Roma. I could never be your lover, only your killer."
"Anyone can be the master to a monster should their heart be wicked enough."
Remarkably interesting set up, true? I was so very intrigued, and I was not disappointed. I loved all the overarching important themes in this book and how this author unapologetically wrote about them. The monster might be a made up thing for this story, but the real monsters are the people who take land and culture while also trying to control every aspect of the people they are stealing from's lives. And those are very much real and still thriving in 2020, and scarier than the scariest of book monsters.
"You destroy me and then you kiss me. You give me reason to hate you and then you give me reason to love you. Is this a lie or the truth? Is this a ploy or your heart reaching for me?"
"This place rumbles on Western idealism and Eastern labor…"
"They believed themselves the rulers of the world—on stolen land in America, on stolen land in Shanghai. Everywhere they went—entitlement."
This book also has some really good queer representation, with a brewing m/m romances between side characters that I think will be very much developed in the next book, but also with a trans girl side character who completely won me over. Obviously, it is ownvoices for the Chinese representation, and one half of the m/m relationship is Korean!
"Juliette Cai feared disapproval more than she feared grim on her soul."
The quotes above were taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication.
Buddy read with Maëlys! ❤
‘we mistook violence for passion… and thought recklessness was freedom.’the ruthless gangs, the rekindling of a first love after betrayal, the haunting of a monster and madness, and the dramatic ploys of various nationalities trying to gain control of shanghai, this story delivers on so many fronts.
— find this review and others on my blog!
This was a city shrouded in blood. It was foolish to try changing it.
“You destroy me and then you kiss me. You give me reason to hate you and then you give me reason to love you. Is this a lie or the truth? Is this a ploy or your heart reaching for me?”
Maybe there was no truth. Maybe nothing was as easy as one truth.
They are criminals—criminals at the top of an empire of thieves and drug lords and pimps, preparing to inherit a broken, terrible, defeated thing that looks upon them in sadness.
Thank you to Simon & Schuster for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for a spot on this blog tour! This did not affect my opinions in any way.
All quotes are from an advance copy and may differ in final publication.
// buddy read with maha <3
˖ ࣪ ◌ ➛ “the stars incline us, they do not bind us.”
˖ ࣪ ◌ ➛ “i am the heir of the scarlet gang,” juliette said. her voice had grown just as sharp as her weapon. “and believe me, tángdì, i will kill you before i let you take it from me.”
˖ ࣪ ◌ ➛ “you chose me four years ago. would you choose me still? would you choose this version of me — these sharp edges and hands far bloodier than yours?”
˖ ࣪ ◌ ➛ “memories were beastly little creatures, after all — they rose with the faintest whiff of nourishment.”
“I hate that the blood feud forced my hand, but I did what I had to do and you may think me monstrous for it. The feud keeps taking and hurting and killing and still I couldn’t stop loving you even when I thought I hated you.”
You chose me four years ago. Would you choose me still? Would you choose this version of me—these sharp edges and hands far bloodier than yours?
“Do you still love me?”
Roma’s eyes shuttered closed. A long second passed.
“Do you not listen to me when I speak?” he answered shakily, his lip quirking up. “I love you. I have always loved you.”
The decade is loose and the morals are looser.
In another world, if she had been given a choice, perhaps she would have walked away, rejected herself as the heir to an empire of mobsters and merchants. But she never had a choice. This was her life, this was her city, these were her people, and because she loved them, she had sworn to herself a long time ago that she would do a damn good job of being who she was because she could be no one else.
Roma wasn’t sure if Benedikt and Marshall were fated to eventually kill each other or kiss each other.
She had fought so hard all her life just to be called Celia, and now her father wanted to give her a different name and… she could accept it.
Sometimes it was hard for Kathleen to remember that she was still her own person, not just shards of a mirror, reflecting back a thousand different personalities most fitting for the situation.
It was because of Dimitri that Roma wasn’t allowed to be soft. It was because of Dimitri that Roma had crafted a cold and brutal face that he hated seeing every time he looked into a mirror.
She could hardly tell the difference between the times when she was fighting and the times when she was barely holding herself together, crumbled pieces staggering forward step-by-step. Maybe those two were one and the same.
She had always thought of herself as the heir of the Scarlet Gang, but that wasn’t it at all, was it? She was the heir to her father’s version of the Scarlet Gang.
The problem with hatred was that when the initial emotion weakened, the responses still remained. The clenched fists and hot veins, the blurred vision and quickened pulse. And in such remains, Juliette was not in control of what they might develop into.
Like yearning.
How was she any different from the killers that lurked in this city—the ones that she was trying to stop?
“You destroy me and then you kiss me. You give me reason to hate you and then you give me reason to love you. Is this a lie or the truth? Is this a ploy or your heart reaching for me?”
She had believed him callous, believed him to have performed the greatest possible betrayal when she had offered him love.
Instead, the truth was that he had gone against everything he stood for. He had stained his own hands with the lives of dozens of innocents, placed razor blades in his own heart just to keep Juliette alive and safe, far from the threats of his father. He hadn’t used the information he gleaned from his time with her as a tool of power. He had used it as a tool of weakness.
“I mourned for months, years outside the gates of the cemetery. Yet I don’t regret choosing you. No matter how cruel you think yourself, your heart beats for your people. That’s why you shot him. That’s why you took the chance. Not because you are merciless. Because you have hope.”
She remembered how Roma used to ponder day in and day out the ways he would change things when the White Flowers came under his hand. And she remembered her own fondness for such ambition, that spark of hope flaring in her chest every time Roma said that the future was theirs, that the city would be theirs one day, united as one, as long as they had each other.
Juliette pulled away, but only to look Roma in the eye, her pulse beating its crescendo. He did not flinch. He met her gaze, steady, unwavering.
In that moment, all Juliette could think was: Please, please, please.
Please don’t break me again.
“Rosalind carried grudges like it was a contest. She was passionate and headstrong and had nerves of steel, but when you looked past her well-chosen, surface-level pretty words, she could also simmer on feelings long past their relevance.
She should have thrown him to the Scarlets, let them deal with him.
No, she decided. He is mine to deal with. He is mine to destroy.
Did he not realize that cutting off ties between them was the only way they could all walk out alive?
He does realize, a little voice whispered. He stays for you. He will not walk away from you. Not a second time. He would rather die.
Juliette supposed it was her turn to walk away. The lover and the liar, the liar and the lover. They switched those roles between themselves like it was a game.
“You destroy me and then you kiss me. You give me a reason to hate you and then you give me a reason to love you.”
“You destroy me and then you kiss me. You give me reason to hate you and then you give me reason to love you. Is this a lie or the truth? Is this a ploy or your heart reaching for me?”
A love like theirs was never going to survive in a city divided by hatred.
“Just leave me here,” he said with a groan. “How are you this bad?” Juliette asked in disbelief. “I thought you were Russian.”
“I am Russian, not an alcoholic,” Roma muttered.
“So you,” Roma went on fiercely, “cannot fool me any longer. You are the same indomitable girl I would have laid my life down to save. I made my choice to believe in you—now you make yours. Will you keep fighting, or will you crumble?”
“I am more concerned with why people were tearing their throats out in this house in the first place—”“It’s the madness,” Juliette interrupted. “It’s here, and it could be a viral contagion. We need to ask the other maids who were in contact with the victims to remain in their rooms for a few days.”
“My name was too Chinese for the West,” Juliette continued, a wry smile on her lips. She didn’t know why her face had morphed itself into amusement. She was anything but amused. “You know how it is—or maybe you don’t. A temporary thing for a temporary place, but now the temporary thing is burrowed in so deep it cannot be removed.”
The Chinese had built the pit, gathered the wood, and lit the match, but it was the foreigners who had come in and poured gasoline upon every surface, letting Shanghai rage into an untamable forest fire of debauchery.
It was the entitlement that drove these men forward. Entitlement that encouraged their wives to place a delicate handkerchief to their nose and sniff, wholeheartedly believing the tirade was deserved. They believed themselves the rulers of the world—on stolen land in America, on stolen land in Shanghai. Everywhere they went—entitlement.
“Too many kind hearts turn cold everyday.”