These Violent Delights

A Novel

By: Micah Nemerever

Narrated by: Michael Crouch

A Literary Hub Best Book of Year • A Crime Reads Best Debut of the Year • A Newsweek 25 Best Fall Books • A Philadelphia Inquirer 10 Big Books for the Fall • An O Magazine.com LGBTQ Books That Are Changing the Literary Landscape • An Electric Lit Most Anticipated Debut • A Paperback Paris Best New LGBTQ+ Books To Read This Year Selection • A Passport Best Book of the Month

The Secret History meets Lie with Me in Micah Nemerever's compulsively readable debut novel—a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.

When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it’s with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. Sensitive, insecure, and incomprehensible to his grieving family, Paul feels isolated and alone. When he meets the worldly Julian in his freshman ethics class, Paul is immediately drawn to his classmate’s effortless charm.

Paul sees Julian as his sole intellectual equal—an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, because with Julian life is more invigorating than Paul could ever have imagined. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel, and Paul becomes increasingly afraid that he can never live up to what Julian expects of him.

As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence.

Unfolding with a propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is an exquisitely plotted excavation of the depths of human desire and the darkness it can bring forth in us.

Read Cautiously

Beautiful and disturbing. It ripped my heart out. It's the kind of book you return to hoping for a better end game.

If the intent was hating the characters...

I truly don't know how to review this book. It was completely disturbing and unsettling. The wording, syntax, meter all combined to create a horror story of a different nature. There is so much hate and anger, false betrayal and feigned affection. I truly just wanted this book to be over. I don't know what I was expecting as the story unfolded; what I was hoping for. Whatever it was it never appeared.

I guess that if the goal of an author is to stir up emotions then Micah Nemerever did an excellent job. The title truly says it all: Violent Delights: How can something violent be delightful, and how can something delightful be violent? The juxtaposition is reflective of the story and is used throughout the book: hate/love, rejection/attraction, depression/elation, and on and on. So many times during the story I found myself confused. Other times I was annoyed. Yet other times I was exasperated. I just wanted to the story to end.

It's true that all fiction cannot be unicorns and rainbows. These Violent Delights is certainly evidence of that. But it's a story that stays with you, leaving you feeling uneasy and somewhat disturbed. Not what one normally expects to take away from the average novel.

Would I recommend the book? Yes, in audio format (Michael Crouch does and outstanding job giving voice to Julian and Paul!). Just know what you're getting into. Be prepared to completely hate the book like I did. And by hate I mean love.

Indulgent, satisfying

Best performance I have ever heard in audiobook delivery. Obsessed with this book and now this author.

A New Telling of Leopold & Loeb

Many, many years ago, I read a book about the real-crime story of Leopold & Loeb. They were the first "thrill killer" duo identified as such in the annals of American crime. Although, as I've said, I read this book many years ago - maybe 40 - as soon as I began this read - "These Violent Delights" - it brought all the details of that book I read so long ago back to my remembrance in technicolor. Although the author insists that this is a "novel", and is not a retelling of the real crime of Leopold & Loeb, I think that the similarities are countless and the differences are few. The names have been changed, but the storyline is unmistakably the same. Don't misunderstand, I loved this book. The author, Micah Nemerever, has done a truly fantastic job of character development. Also, the narrator, Michael Crouch, brings these characters to life. As I recall from the book I read those many years ago, that was one of the things I found sadly lacking... the book read more like an encyclopedia article on the criminals and their crime. This book is much more intriguing. Nemerever does such a great job of conveying fears and emotions that you won't be able to put this one down.

Excellent book. Hated it.

F*cking miserable. Why do I keep reading literary fiction? Why why why why why why