Our Dark Duet

• Author: Victoria Schwab
• Genre: YA Fantasy
• Publication Date: June 13, 2017
• Publisher: Greenwillow Books
• Series: Monsters of Verity #2

TRIGGER WARNING: gore, violence

Kate Harker isn’t afraid of monsters. She hunts them. And she’s good at it.

August Flynn once yearned to be human. But no longer. He has a part to play. And he will play it, no matter the cost.

The war has begun.

The monsters are winning.

Kate will have to return to Verity. August will have to let her back in. And a new monster is waiting — one that feeds on chaos and brings out its victims’ inner demons. 

Which will be harder to conquer: the monsters they face, or the monsters within?

I probably don’t have to remind you how much I loved This Savage Song (see review here in case I do). So when I picked this book up, it was like going right back into the dark and dangerous world of this series. 

Kate is currently in Prosperity, hunting monsters. But when she discovers an all-new kind of monster that’s headed back to wreak havoc in Verity, she realizes that she has no choice but to go back and try to work with August to save her city. 

“Because she knew a secret: there were two kinds of monsters, the kind that hunted the streets and the kind that lived in your head. She could fight the first, but the second was more dangerous. It was always, always, always a step ahead.”

Of course, going back to Verity comes with a whole set of issues. There’s the problem that comes with the name Harker, the problem of Sloan wanting to kill her, the monsters that are overrunning Verity, and the teeny tiny problem of bad blood between the Harkers and the South City folks. You know, nothing major or anything, right?

And that’s not all. August isn’t the same guy that she left behind. He’s had to make some serious changes as he stepped up to fill Leo’s shoes and head the FTF. He had to change who he was, and doesn’t have time to be the sweet, sensitive boy monster who wanted to be human. Now he’s just a monster who has to be strong. Isn’t he?

“For months he’d been playing a part, instead of becoming it, pretending to be strong while all the while harboring a shred of hope that there was still a world where he could feel human.”

But when this new threat comes to Verity, Kate and August have no choice but to work together. No one really knows what it is, except Kate, and no one will listen to her, except August. She doesn’t exactly have a lot of credibility, no allies, and no resources other than her own skills and incredible stubbornness. Turns out that adds up to quite a bit (naturally). But while she and the FTF are hunting this new monster, Sloan and his creepy monsters are hunting too. 

There’s so much action, and plenty of plot twists. I saw some of them coming, but others completely blindsided me in the best possible way. Just like the other book, reading this left me with an impending sense of doom. As though everything was about to go off the rails at any given moment, and there was no way out. The people of Verity are trapped in a rapidly worsening situation with only a small force protecting them against ever increasing odds, but they don’t lose hope. I loved the fast-paced story, and the ending was absolutely perfect.

People who have sat around with me while I’m reading, especially when there’s a surprising reveal, a shocking plot twist, or an unexpected event often look up in alarm when I gasp audibly. The gasp factor is directly related to the number of times I audibly gasp during a reading, and there isn’t an upper limit.

Gasp Factor: 12