I’m going to be honest here. I’m not usually a fan of the genre that’s developed around retelling Shakespeare plays. Most of the time, it just doesn’t do it for me. It doesn’t matter what “twist” the author gives to the story, it’s likely been done before, and the whole thing just ends up feeling… tired.

Unfortunately, mining Shakespeare to tell a modern story is usually the sign of an uninspired or hacky writer. It’s as if a writer without any “original” ideas took their quirky NaNoWriMo concept and polished it up a bit. It simply lacks imagination.

So… yeah, I have some feelings about books that are “retellings” or “reimaginings” of Shakespeare’s plays.

But then Chloe Gong showed up with These Violent Delights, deliberately packed my preconceptions in dynamite, and happily blew them out of the fucking water.

Because when you start a book like this, you’ve grabbed me where it counts. And you have my attention:

In glittering Shanghai, a monster awakens.

And reader, let me tell you: These Violent Delights is, in short, a goddamn delight. If it were merely described as “a retelling of Romeo & Juliet,” I very likely would’ve passed it over. However, it extends that description: “a retelling of Romeo & Juliet set in 1920s Shanghai, with rival gangs running the streets red and a mysterious monster spreading a deadly madness.”

Oh yes, you most certainly have my attention.

The book centers on 18-year-old Juliette Cai (Juliet Capulet, natch), the Chinese heir to the Scarlet Gang who has just returned home from New York. As a mysterious illness begins to sweep through Shanghai – an “illness” that causes people to literally tear out their own throats – she must secretly join forces with Roma Montagov (Romeo Montague), the Russian heir to the rival White Flowers… who also happens to be her ex-lover.

It’s at this point that I should probably point out that These Violent Delights (published by Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster) is a “retelling” of Romeo & Juliet only in the broadest possible strokes. Gong cleverly plays with characters’ names to make them appropriate for the Chinese or Russian (or British) characters in her book, and in many cases, it’s obvious who each is supposed to represent (for example, Marshall = Mercutio, Benedikt = Benvolio, Tyler = Tybalt, Paul = Paris). So if you know the play, you can guess the role each is generally supposed to fill.

And yes, the book does follow the burgeoning love affair that develops between Juliette and Roma, but it’s far more tumultuous and political than anything Juliet and Romeo went through.

Beyond that, though, don’t expect to find a beat-by-beat retelling of Shakespeare’s play. Gong takes only the most general conceits of Romeo & Juliet and makes the story 100 percent completely her own.

Was the line between enemy and friend horizontal or vertical? Was it a great plain to lumber across or was it a high, high wall – either to be scaled or kicked down in one big blow?

By setting her story in 1920s Shanghai – a city in the midst of revolution, both literal and figurative – Gong is able to cast rival criminal syndicates as her “warring families.” But this setting also opens the door to far more more interesting dichotomies… and storytelling: the partition of Shanghai into various international settlements, the resulting “Westernization” of Shanghai versus its inherent Chinese identity, the growth of communism as a real force in the country, and the inevitable clash between the Communists and Nationalists.

In the early to mid-20s, when These Violent Delights is set, the Cai and Montagov gangs are at once clinging to a past that no longer exists – one where they wield ultimate power in the city – and facing an uncertain future. For in 1927, China would succumb to a brutal civil war, and the gangs that once controlled Shanghai would be forced to take sides, thereby changing their dynamic forever.

They have always said that Shanghai is an ugly daughter, but as the years grow on, it isn’t enough anymore to characterize this city as merely one entity. This place rumbles on Western idealism and Eastern labor, hateful of its split and unable to function without it.

The “madness” that Gong introduces to the story (a dark twist on “a plague on both your houses”) takes it even further away from the source material. That opening line that captivated me so? That’s not metaphorical; there really is a monster preying on Shanghai. And though the competing tensions I just mentioned flesh out the background and bring the world to life, it’s this violently hungry monster that is the immediate catalyst for bringing Juliette and Roma together.

And it’s terrifying.

Shanghai is a city with a very special place in my own heart. Having lived there for a couple years, I am all too aware of the city’s capricious nature. Though the Shanghai of the early 21st century bears little resemblance to the Shanghai of the early 20th century, the city remains incredibly vibrant, turbulent, and alive.

It is a city forever at war with itself, constantly redefining its place in China… and always setting itself apart from a country that is now changing at an equally rapid pace.

And Chloe Gong gets it. She really gets it:

“They say Shanghai stands tall like an emperor’s ugly daughter, its streets sprawling in a manner that only the limbs of a snarling princess could manage. It was not born this way. It used to be beautiful. They used to croon over it, examining the lines of its body and humming beneath their breath, nodding and deciding that it was well suited for children. Then this city mutilated itself with a wide, wide grin. It dragged a knife down its cheek and took the blade to its chest and now it worries not for finding suitors, but merely for running wild, drunk on the invulnerability of inherited power, well suited only for profit and feasting, dancing and whoring. Now it may be ugly, but it is glorious.”

Shanghai is certainly an acquired taste. When I first visited the city, I hated it (for a number of reasons). It wasn’t until I moved there that I fell head over heels in love with it. The more time I spent there, and the more I explored and immersed myself in the city, the more infatuated I became. It’s a city that’s impossible to define, and I love it to its very bones.

But I digress.

These Violent Delights takes an intriguing – yet risky – premise (casting a well-known story in a drastically different setting) and delivers on all fronts. It’s the book I needed this year, and it does something I didn’t think possible: It salvages 2020 from the dustbin of history.

One final note: Just so you know, These Violent Delights isn’t a complete story. If you were to lay this over top of Romeo & Juliet, it covers roughly the first two acts of the play. An as-yet unnamed second book is scheduled for a fall 2021 release, and it’s unclear if that will round out the story, or if this will ultimately be a trilogy.

Either way, I’m on board for the entire ride.

This was what this city did to lovers. It tossed blame around like a slick coat of blood, mixing and merging with everything else until it had left its stain.