Review: This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

Title: This Savage Song
Author: Victoria Schwab
Publication Date:  July 5th, 2016
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Source: Bought it
Where to find: Goodreads / Amazon / Book Depository

Summary: 

There’s no such thing as safe in a city at war, a city overrun with monsters. In this dark urban fantasy from author Victoria Schwab, a young woman and a young man must choose whether to become heroes or villains—and friends or enemies—with the future of their home at stake. The first of two books.

Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city—a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent—but he’s one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who’s just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August’s secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives.

“You wanted to feel alive, right? It doesn't matter if you're monster or human. Living hurts.”

I do not know where to begin with this book. I do not think anything I write will do it justice. This book had everything I wanted and needed. There was so much to fall in love with.

I'm a huge fan of Victoria Schwab and everything she has written, this book being no exception. She just has this way of writing that pulls you right into the meat of the story and the world. So Verity is an amazing setting. From the first page I was obsessed with learning as much as I could about the city and its strange inhabitants. Victoria did a fantastic job of giving us the information about the world as we needed it. The story unfolded in a great way that keep me hooked all the way through. For me there was very little down time at all, I was eager throughout the book to see what was going to happen next.

In terms of the characters, we have two completely different but also the same people. Kate and August were a great pair and I loved watching their chemistry unfold throughout the book. There is so much keeping them apart but they are thrown into this war. 

Victoria Schwab is one of my auto-buy authors. She is able to create these amazing worlds whether they are fantasy or a scary world not far from our own. Her world building is what first gets you drawn into each book, but then you meet the characters and fall in love with them too.

At her event this week, she talked about how her characters are all outsiders just trying to fit in and learn to live as an outsider. Something about that really stuck with me. I think that is part of why I'm so drawn to her books. They are not about the extraordinary person living a normal life. They are about the person who has never really fit in and never will. I really think August and Kate's story really works with this theme. You have Kate, the daughter of the "mob boss", trying to fit in and be like her father and you have the monster, August, who desperately wants to be human and live