(It took me forever to get this picture right. Appreciate it, please.)
August Flynn is a monster. He can see the souls of people who have sinned, and then with a song from his violin, he can steal their soul.
Kate Harker is a monstrous human. One of the first scenes with this girl is her burning down a chapel, so, yeah, she's not really the "typical YA protagonist" that we see.
Schwab is one of my favorite authors. She has an incredible talent for crafting characters, and that for me always comes across as the strongest point in her books. They are all so complex and real and, often if not always, not entirely good. To be cliche and pull out my inner Harry Potter nerd, no person is ever wholly good or wholly evil, and I think that Schwab is really talented at creating characters with both light and dark inside them.
Also on the note of characters, there are some amazing side characters in this book. August's family, especially his brother and sister, are so interesting and don't fall to the wayside as many YA family members do.
I'm not typically a fan of urban fantasy (meaning: I normally just don't read it) but that's what this is and it's made me interested in checking out more from this genre.
The history that Schwab creates in this book of an America that has fallen and changed is (let me say it for the thousandth time) endlessly interesting. The beginning of the book does get a little information-heavy; however, because the monsters and how they work and the division of the main city is so interesting, I ate up and valued the information rather than finding it sluggish.
Something happens in this book that genuinely made me stop and freak out a bit. This happens very rarely for me in books, so I was very happy to see that Schwab had made me care so much for these characters that I had to put the book down for a second to calm down.
I did find the ending ever so slightly underwhelming, but it was only really one aspect of the ending that it really didn't bother me too much. I'm happy with how the story ultimately ended, and I'm now very much anticipating Our Dark Duet, which releases in June of this year.
FAVORITE QUOTES
It was a cruel trick of the universe, thought August, that he only felt human after doing something so monstrous.
But the teacher had been right about one thing: violence breeds. Someone pulls a trigger, sets off a bomb, drives a bus full of tourists off a bridge, and what's left in the wake isn't just shell casings, wreckage, bodies. There's something else. Something bad. An aftermath. A recoil. A reaction to all that anger and pain and death.
This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1) by Victoria SchwabPublished: 5 July 2016 by Greenwillow Books
Format - Length: Hardcover - 427 pages
Source: Owlcrate
Genre: Young Adult, Urban Fantasy
Goodreads | My Goodreads Review
Amazon | Barnes and Noble
There’s no such thing as safe.
Kate Harker wants to be as ruthless as her father. After five years and six boarding schools, she’s finally going home to prove that she can be.
August Flynn wants to be human. But he isn’t. He’s a monster, one that can steal souls with a song. He’s one of the three most powerful monsters in a city overrun with them. His own father’s secret weapon.
Their city is divided.
Their city is crumbling.
Kate and August are the only two who see both sides, the only two who could do something.
But how do you decide to be a hero or a villain when it’s hard to tell which is which?
Have you read this book? What's your favorite Schwab book? Tell me down in comments!
