Our Dark Duet by Victoria Schwab

This is a very good book.
The characters are amazing and distinct and you can completely feel them through the page.
The plot sucks you in and makes you want to speed to the end. Then it makes you want to slow down and savor it. Then speed through again.
This book (really the series, and kind of all of Schwab’s work) grapples with violence and judgment and how to tell if the core of someone is irrevocably broken. If all humans are monsters and if monsters have it in them to become human. This book series really sinks into violence in a way I am fascinated by. I kept thinking back to different authors I had read for a Politics of the Resistance class my last semester, and to class discussions about when violence is needed and the told violence takes on the humans who commit it.
Despite the violence that takes center stage in this book the fight to cling to hope and combat what is wrong in the world really comes off the page. This book was published in 2017 and I really wonder exactly when Schwab submitted the final book. And if the political conversation affected the way she dealt with violence and hope and how we deal with conflict.
But this series was awesome and I loved it and I cried twice but not as much as I would have expected. I recommend this book. It is a great close to a series. It seems that the way to avoid lackluster middle books is to write a duet comprised of two killer books.

I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads and read it on May 27th, 2018.