These Violent Delights author Chloe Gong on her favorite YA monsters this spooky season

Chloe Gong, the author of the upcoming novel These Violent Delights, runs down her favorite YA monsters for us to get everyone in the mood for spooky season.

You may have heard that Chloe Gong’s upcoming debut novel, These Violent Delights, is a loose retelling of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. 

But that’s certainly not all this story is – it’s also a period piece, a gangland drama, a social commentary, and, surprisingly enough, a rather frightening monster mystery.

Set in 1920s Shanghai, the story follows the story of Juliette Cai and Roma Montagov, heirs to the city’s two most powerful rival gangs. Ex-lovers with a complex and mysterious past, they are both struggling to figure out their places in both their respective gangs and in a city that’s changing rapidly, thanks to an influx of foreign troops, capitalists and would-be colonizers.

The former lovers are forced to work together to save their people when a mysterious creature is sighted in the Huangpu River, a monster that appears to leave contagion and madness in its wake. (Top that, Shakespeare.)

To celebrate the release of These Violent Delights, we asked Gong to tell us about some of her favorite recent monsters from the world of young adult fiction and what it is about these creatures – sympathetic or not – that speak to her.