Kate Harker has been kicked out of enough boarding schools that her father finally gives in to her biggest wish: to come home to the city of Verity, a city divided between humans and monsters. Although desperate to be human, August Flynn is one of those monsters—a monster who only has to play a song on his violin to steal a human’s soul. With the truce keeping the peace between humans and monsters strained, August—pretending to be human—is sent to Kate’s new school to keep an eye on her. Kate soon discovers August’s secret and decides to capture him and bring him to her father to show just how ruthless she can be. But a failed assassination attempt sets off a chain of events that could finally break the already fragile truce in Verity.

I’ve been trying (and failing miserably) to not buy a lot of books this year, because my library is already full of books that I haven’t read yet (current count is 82). But when I saw the ebook version of This Savage Song was on sale on Amazon for $2, I knew I had to go for it. This is actually the first book I’ve read by Victoria Schwab, but I’ve been pumped about reading her work for a while. I began to follow her on Twitter after I read a blog post she wrote about the struggles of getting published and how aspiring writer’s should not give up, but continue on with the knowledge that it will be a struggle. The post was inspirational, and I knew I had to read more of her advice. Between her tweets and the tweets of her fans (who are also amazing), I knew I had to get my hands on her work.

Anyway, it probably took me about one-third of This Savage Song to really get into the story. Schwab’s writing is well done, but the way she started this book was a bit disjointed, but not to the point where I wanted to give up. In fact, it made me want to keep going because I wanted to find out what it all meant. It wasn’t until after the reader begins to find out exactly what kind of monster August is that I got sucked in. From that point on, I felt that the story was better paced and the reader really gets a feel for the characters. While the majority of the ending was surprising and heart racing, there was one scene that I was able to guess prior to it occurring. However, Schwab has a way with words that captures the imagination and the ending of the book made me excited for the release of the sequel, Our Dark Duet.