Sophia Thorne

First let me say that I found the beginning chapters of My Dark Romeo dreadfully dull, and had to acclimate myself to reading this more complexly-worded narrative style. Second, I initially loathed both characters. But I think this loathing, resulting from this cellar-door-of-humanity characterization present at the beginning on the part of both point-of-view characters, is part of what gives the character arcs and the overall plot of My Dark Romeo so much profound impact at its conclusion. To reach astonishing heights we must weather subterranean lows, and both these characters started out on rock bottom of the likability scale and over the course of an exhaustive battle of wits, delivered a completely believable redemption arc for the villainous Romeo and a convincing coming-of-age arc for the immature Dallas that brought me to tears at the black moment, and left me viscerally feeling the depths of Dallas’s and Romeo’s despair, and through that experiencing the depths, too, of their love.

I completely buy into the happily-ever-after implied by the ending of My Dark Romeo. After the trials Romeo and Dallas weathered, and then to almost lose everything at the very moment they first realized they had everything, catapulted the stakes and the emotions of these two characters’ love story into overdrive. Hunter S. Parkington and L. J. Shen masterfully convey how each realization, each concession made by each character logically sculpted who they were in the following chapter, and so on, until these two have so shaped one another that to disentangle one vine would cause the other to wither. I am fully invested in Romeo and Dallas’s happily-ever-after. Highly recommend!