Our Dark Duet

I mentioned in my previous review that This Savage Song was a creepy fun read and hoped the same for this book too. Ohh was I wrong!!! “Fun” is not the right word to describe this book. It's deep, dark, violent, monstrous, horrifying and gut wrenching. Mind you, this is not a negative review. The writing is brilliant and I have to give a hats off to the author for this amazingly thought out plot. And the characters are just WOW!!!! No other words that I can think of to describe my feelings towards them.

Kate has fled to Prosperity and become a monster hunter. August has become the leader of the task force and given up his pursuit of trying to live in exchange for the protection of everyone who needs him. And there are new monsters in town – Soro is a new Sunai who doesn't think like August but believes that all sinners deserve their punishment, irrespective of their intent, everything is just black or white; Alice a Malchai is born out of Kate's sin and is ruthless, baiting and trying to kill August and waiting for the day when she can destroy her maker; and a new shadow monster who feeds on chaos and turns everyone into killing each other. Kate's encounter with this Chaos Monster forces her to come back to Verity, to August. The book is full of deaths, each side killing the other, monsters and humans fighting each other and themselves and the ultimate fight that everyone is waiting for – Alice vs Kate, August vs Sloan.

I just love Kate and August. She is a warrior through and through and will fight any obstacles to defeat her enemy. August has changed, he is not the shy boy from the first book, he is a leader now, but doesn't mean he has started to enjoy the reaping. Finally when they both meet, I realized why they should be together. Because he makes Kate think of someone other than herself, and she makes August think of himself rather than all of South City. They bring out the best of each other and I just love the implicit trust and friendship that they share. They are the pillars of this book and the character development through just two books is astounding. The ending is bittersweet, heartbreaking but still hopeful. The monsters still linger, but hopefully they can be defeated.