“i am chained to you for all of eternity. take my soul into yours and ruin me evermore.”

i've never read naomi loud before, but i'm glad i stepped out of my comfort zone and picked this book as an introduction to their work because from the little i know about them, they are the embodiment of a dance macabre. this is their magnum opus.

the addams family meets the crow with a hint of pagan folklore; this was a true enemies to lovers, the juxtaposition between the hall of mirrors and the cemetery is an essay to the contrast of their characterization, idolatry and death, opposites attracting. they claimed again and again each other’s deaths as their own, tiptoeing the line between murder as a slow burning foreplay and falling deeper into a madness that not even death could assuage. and death and blood were at the very marrow of their bond, in an almost vampiric sense; how the conduit of death was enthralled watching her enemy kill, as much as he was mesmerized to witness her worshipping ritual, but above all the imagery of licking and wanting to bathe in their lover's blood, the life force running through their veins as much as the madness they reveled in, culminating in the symbol of their vows. i could die. and he built her a crematorium. what in the gomez and morticia addams love language is that? romance isn't dead. romance is death.

* i was sent an arc by good girls pr in exchange for a honest review