This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab (2016)

August Flynn is a monster. Not the kind of monster that lives under your bed, but the kind of monster the looks human and breathes like a human. August is the result of a mass murder, just like all the other monsters are a result of some kind of terrible action done by a human. When he was created, he was adopted by the Flynns, rulers of the South City. Kate Harker, the daughter of the ruler of the North City, views monsters as something to control, especially since there has been a wave of uncooperativeness from the monsters in the past few weeks. It seems that August and Kate are on opposite sides of a city that’s about to break into madness and to survive they must go against all their instincts and trust each other.

Ever since This Savage Song came out in July of last year everybody I follow has been raving about it. Telling me it’s one of the best releases of the year, that it’s amazing. The same goes for all of Victoria Schwab’s books. However, when I read her book The Archived a few years ago I was really disappointed. I thought the story was boring and the writing was just average. Anyway, due to all the hype, homegirl read this book. And guess what? It wasn’t that good.

First, I have to give Schwab points for being able to write an original story. I have never read a story like this novel, where monsters are created from terrible acts that humans commit. Yet, even though it was an original idea, for it to work it needed to be explained properly. I do know that there are three different types of monsters created from three different kinds of acts, but I didn’t really understand how it all worked and I really paid attention. There wasn’t any explanation of why any of this started or happened in specifically August and Kate’s city, which would’ve been helpful because it was implied that the monsters were only created inside their city.

This plot was all over the place. For the first half, it focuses on fairly mundane actions like going to school and whatnot and then BAM! they’re on the flee for survival from monsters who are trying to kill them. Yes, there was a little hint that that was going to happen, but still not enough that it felt like it made sense. Going along with that, the writing isn’t that great. At times I didn’t know it the characters were dreaming or not simply because what was happening was so ridiculous with no background. There was also a lot of fight scenes that simply didn’t read well.

I really didn’t like Kate, who the story opens up with. This novel is told in third-person but focuses on individual characters through the chapters. Kate was a vindictive person who enjoyed being mean and cruel to other people. She was basically an emotionless building who did terrible acts (like burning down buildings) just because she could. On the other hand, I did really enjoy August. He was honestly the most human-like character in the whole book. He thought cautiously about all of his words and actions and closely examined what it meant to be human. There was a tenderness with him, an innocence, that was really needed in a book that was so dark.

I also liked the fact that there was no romance in this book. It was purely based on the building of friendship between August and Kate. Usually in YA, when there’s opposite point of views between a guy and a girl it’s basically a given that they fall in love. It was nice to instead see a budding friendship, especially since it softened up Kate a little.

There is a sequel to This Savage Song, but I don’t know if I’ll be reading it because 1) this book was just okay and 2) there was actually a pretty good ending. However, I hear the second one is really fantastic, so you never know.

3 Stars