These Violent Delights Books in Order

The These Violent Delights duet takes Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to 1920s Shanghai, then gives the familiar tragedy a very different set of rules. This is a city split by foreign control, political unrest, and a long-running gang war. At its center are the Chinese Scarlet Gang and the Russian White Flowers, two criminal families fighting for territory and survival.

Juliette Cai has returned from New York to claim her place as heir to the Scarlets. She is smart, guarded, and determined to prove that she can lead, even when her own family doubts her. Roma Montagov, heir to the White Flowers, is the boy she once loved and the person she now has every reason to hate. A betrayal years earlier left both of them carrying anger that neither can put aside.

Then Shanghai begins to break apart in a new way.

In These Violent Delights, a frightening contagion drives people to violent deaths, and rumors point to a monster in the Huangpu River. Juliette and Roma cannot solve it alone, even though working together risks reopening every old wound between their families. The book balances an investigation, a tense former-romance dynamic, and the question of whether either gang can protect the city they both want to control.

Our Violent Ends raises the stakes in 1927. The first book's danger may be over, but the blood feud is not, and Shanghai is edging toward revolution. Juliette and Roma are pulled between personal loyalty, family demands, and another threat that could destroy the city. Their relationship matters, but it is never separate from the larger fight over power and survival.

Expect historical fantasy with sharp banter, messy choices, monsters, and a romance that has to contend with real consequences. Shanghai is more than a backdrop here. Its neighborhoods, languages, political pressures, and competing communities shape every alliance and every betrayal.

Start with These Violent Delights and read straight through to Our Violent Ends. The two books tell one continuous story, so the second is best saved until after the first.