1926, Shanghai: The blood feud between rival gangs The Scarlets and the White Flowers continues as a mysterious illness ravages the streets killing with abandon. Heirs Juliette Cai and Roma Montagov have a sketchy past with each other but need to work together to try and solve the mystery before it's too late and more people die.

This was a book I really thought I would love, and there were certainly elements of the book that I really enjoyed but overall, I found it very hard to fall into the story, it felt very slow and drawn out and I just couldn't seem to really get the story to capture me the way I wanted it too.

The setting of Shanghai is fantastic, and there's so much political upheaval to consider in the story - not only are we learning about the rival gangs and all the warfare that comes with the blood feud but there is also the rising threat of the Communist Party, as well as the lurking Nationalists. And then on top of that, there's also a really interesting exploration of colonisation in this book that I think was done really well. The white man of England, France and even Russia has infiltrated the streets of Shanghai and has even cut away a portion of the city from its real inhabitant. The real monster in the story is the white man and the white man ideal of what is right and what is wrong, not the literal monster stalking the streets.

I liked learning about the Scarlets and the White Flowers though I agree with other reviewers that it feels like we got to know a lot more about the Scarlets. I can only presume there will be a bigger focus on the White Flowers in the second book. Juliette and Roma were....okay for me. I felt at times they were outshone by the side characters; Kathleen, Benedickt and Marshall. I actually felt more engaged reading about these characters than our main enemies to lovers. Call me bloodthirsty as well but I always have a roll my eyes moment when there's a character who won't kill in these kind of novels (Roma) when sometimes deposing of someone will literally save your life. I liked that Juliette was much more 'gangster' in that she knew sometimes you had to kill to get things done properly.

I just found it very hard to invest myself fully in this story- I found myself wandering off mid-chapter, I found that I was really motivated to really care about the main characters and overall my enjoyment level while reading it was low. I definitely appreciate lot of the themes in this book and I think they were done well, I just didn't have a good reading time.