Sung in Shadow

It was obvious early on that this was a re-telling of Romeo and Juliet with the names changed and it started off promisingly. However, as I only know the play in general outline and the beginning/end, I wasn't aware until the scene arrived that a certain character is killed off quite early in the story. As this was my favourite character in the book, and the two leads are very bland, I lost interest and the rest of it dragged rather, despite the good writing style. There was also what I found a rather unnecessary pseudo-incest subplot between two villainous characters involving a reoccurrence of a motif often found in Lee and which I'm not keen on - the woman who "enjoys" male sexual violence. So overall, can only rate this an OK 2 show more stars because a 3 star on Goodreads would mean "I liked it" which sadly wasn't the case. show less

Tanith's spin on Romeo and Juliet. As usual, the world has her flair and attention to detail. From what I can recall (which is probably not much), it follows the original pretty closely. I really enjoyed Mercutio's character the most and didn't care for Romeo or Juliet. Perhaps fans of Shakespeare would find this more entertaining than I did, but it's still a solid read for Tanith fans.

A semi-fantastical retelling of Romeo and Juliet. The writing is great, the descriptive prose contained a few phrases that reminded me of a discussion about using metaphors that mix senses, but because it followed Shakespeare so closely, I was anticipating events all the way through. With books that I'm re-reading, that's fine, but on a first read, it's disorienting.