Review: Our Dark Duet by Victoria Schwab

Our Dark Duet by Victoria Schwab
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have to say I was kind of stunned by the ending, but it was perfect and the book was excellent. I listened to it on audio and just couldn't put it down. Victoria Schwab is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Her writing is dark, emotional, and just fantastic.

We pick up several months after we leave Kate and August. Kate is in Prosperity, a city rumored to have no monsters, but Kate has become a monster hunter. She has found herself a group of friends who have named themselves the Wardens and they hack into the city's systems at night and help Kate fight what goes bump in the night. Kate finds a new monster, unlike anything she has ever seen before, dubbed the Chaos Eater, and it infects Kate. Kate fights the monster's need to invoke fear and chaos into the humans around it so it can feed for the entire book. The monster flees to Verity and Kate follows. Meanwhile, August has take up Leo's role as head Sunai in the FTF in the fight against the monster population in Verity. He is at war within himself to be the monster his brother wanted him to be, the monster the people need him to be, and the human he wanted to be. We also get to know Soro, a new Sunai, who while a monster provides some great non-gender representation. Soro is referred to with they and their throughout the books, and there is a section when August asks if Soro is male or female and Soro says they just are. I really liked that especially since this is YA. I would have loved to see more of Soro and Ilsa in the book, but they probably could have novels of their own.

August and Kate have been thinking about one another since they parted ways and when they are reunited, August is not the same. She challenges him at every step to be the boy she once knew, while he challenges her as he always did to make more rational decisions. With both of their worlds unraveling the friends must find and battle this new monster, Sloan the monster from their past that Kate thought she killed, and Alice her own personal nightmare.

I loved the characters in the series. I loved Kate and August throughout the series. The development of the characters, family ties, and friendships among all the characters was excellent. I loved the life lessons in the book.  I would have liked a bit more on the Chaos Eater and the Wardens.  Overall, I really loved the series, and I'll be looking to add these books to my permanent collection soon.  Therese Plummer did an awesome job with the audio!