Book Review: This Savage Song

Title: This Savage Song
Author: Victoria Schwab
Rating: 5/5 Stars
Series: Monsters of Verity (Book 1)

Reread Count: 2

Hehehe I love Victoria Schwab and her books so much I can't even deal right now.

I am a very happy bookworm.

I am going to attempt to make an organized list of All the Reasons Why This Book Is Awesome:

• First off, monsters. Who are not like the boogyman monsters or those monsters that show up in every other YA fantasy novel, and not those awful things in The Twelve that made me scared of the dark for weeks, but almost like (going out on a limb here) physical representations of the monsters present within the human race? The bigger the act of violence, the more you lose (like when you create a Sunai, you give up your soul because the act was that bad). No idea if that is actually what Schwab meant for them to represent but that's what I thought about when I though monsters so... anyway I just really liked the depths of the monsters, and how, excluding the hive-mind Corsai, were super intelligent and knew exactly what they wanted and it was a nice change from the usual brainless and violent monster. Who most of the time happens to have no face do you know how creepy that is?
• I loved the dual storyline/narration. On one hand you have Kate, a human who is determined to make herself a monster so she can please her extremely violent and nasty father. It honestly made me sad to read some of her parts because the lengths that she goes to to try and impress her father are pretty extreme and I think that it's just sad that she has to prove to her father that she's "worthy" instead of being loved for who she is. And then you have August, a monster who desperately wants to be human. And he's trying to escape this stereotype that everyone has and that his nasty brother who I HATE is trying to enforce. Even with the whole "you always want to be what you can't" narrative yet the characters never stop trying...
• Ilsa deserves her own special bullet point. I just loved the air of mystery around her in the beginning and then the explanations that come at the end. She is, hands down, my favorite character, and she doesn't even appear that often. And the cat. The cat is awesome too.
• Plot twists and evil characters GALORE. I obviously knew what was going to happen already because I already read the book but I still loved the twists, most of them aren't predictable (there are one or two that are pretty obvious but idk if it was because I've read too many fantasy books or if its because I've read this book before or if they were just predictable in general but this was minority of the twists).
• The message behind this book. The monsters were only created because of the violent acts of humans, and honestly the humans in this book were also way worse than the monsters to be honest. Also, greed and money was a huge part of this book. Probably my favorite message though was that you can't control the lot you get in life, but you can choose how you react to it. I feel like these all apply to human nature and life/society in general so it was not only an entertaining read but an educational one as well.

Do I still like the Shades of Magic series better? Definitely, I feel like it is much more complex with a bit more development and more surprising plot twists. But hey, an enjoyable read is an enjoyable read!

See this review on Goodreads.