Our Dark Duet
Victoria Schwab
Rating System:
Overall: 5/5
Plot and themes: 4/5
Characters: 5/5
Writing style: 5/5
Attention-grabbing: 5/5
This is the second and final book in the Monster of Verity duology following the stories of Kate Harker and August Flynn. Kate is the daughter of a recently deceased kingpin and she's steering clear of the city he used to run and the monsters whom they've both angered. August is a Sunai, destined to identify the purity of humans' souls and weigh their right to live as he tries to save a city that has fallen into chaos. Both are struggling to balance their trauma and their desire to pave the way for a better world.
Shoutout to VE Schwab because she rarely if ever fails to make me cry. This book literally traumatized me, I finished it and sat at my desk for the rest of the day with resting anxiety. This is such a beautifully written sequel, I was on the fence for a bit but the characters really won me over. They really developed so much in such a short period of time. I loved how it played with the idea of innate goodness, both in what the Sunai could understand as the tainting of a soul and the destiny which you are given based on your upbringing or familial ties.
The only problem I had was with the pacing. The last hundred or two hundred pages were amazing but there were a lot of characters introduced at the beginning that didn't get the exposition that they deserved for the sake of keeping it to a duology. It just felt like it was leading up to a lot more but also maybe I'm just used to extended series. The ending wrapped up the main characters' extremely well but just lost me on a lot of other conflicts.
All in all though it was an amazing duology! I didn't think I would ever like it as much as her other books but frankly it really got me. I'll be depressed for a while but at least I'm depressed with the understanding that it was an amazing journey.
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