Until I die by Deidra Duncan

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶🌶

Blurb:

In the ruins of a nation, two enemies risk everything for a chance at justice... and each other.
After the Fracture, nothing is safe—not love, not truth, and certainly not women. In the ashes of the fallen United States, the New American Order has seized power, silencing dissent and enslaving the vulnerable. To stop the spread of their evil, Sophia Reeves has given everything to the Defiance, a resistance force battling the NAO, but now, her general has another command: become a contact for an enemy officer-turned-spy. She understands the sacrifice this order requires. Association with a Blood Colonel is a death sentence—especially for a woman.

He's just a name at first. A whisper in the dark. But week by week, Lucas Scott becomes something more—dangerously unreadable, brutally efficient, and far too human for a man embedded in a regime that breaks people like her. Sophia expects cruelty. She prepares for betrayal. What she finds is a man haunted by secrets, driven by grief, and willing to burn the whole world down for a hope he's barely clinging to.

Their alliance is a fragile one, forged in shadow and drenched in danger. But as the Defiance grows closer to victory, their missions become deadlier, and the line between duty and desire blurs. Beneath the shadow of escalating war, Sophia and Lucas must decide what they're willing to sacrifice for a cause that might already be lost—and for a love they were never meant to find.

Hauntingly raw and achingly romantic, UNTIL I DIE is a story of rebellion, redemption, and the unbreakable will to love in a world that has forgotten how.

My Review:

I picked this book up because I’ve been craving a good dystopian novel, the kind that pulls you into a broken world and doesn’t let you breathe until the very last page. What I got was… not what I expected. And honestly? I still don’t know what I was expecting, but this book completely blindsided me in the best and most unsettling way.

This is a standalone that somehow manages to pack in action, tension, and a forbidden romance that feels both reckless and inevitable. From the start, there’s this underlying sense of unease that builds with every chapter. The world itself is harsh and politically charged, and it doesn’t shy away from mirroring themes that feel uncomfortably close to the reality we’re living in right now. At times, it feels less like fiction and more like a warning.

The romance? Absolutely wild. The kind that makes you question every decision the characters make while also completely understanding why they make them. It’s messy, intense, and forbidden in a way that raises the stakes of everything else happening around them. You’re constantly torn between rooting for them and bracing yourself for the fallout.

And then there are the darker themes moments that genuinely made my stomach turn. This isn’t a light dystopian read. It pushes boundaries, digs into uncomfortable territory, and forces you to sit with it long after you’ve put the book down. One big thing I took away from this book is that no matter what side, women are used. We are treated like property. Expendable.

Going into this, I truly had no idea what I was getting into. It caught me off guard, challenged me, and lingered in my mind far longer than I expected. Now that I’ve had time to sit with it, I can say this was a solid four-star read for me, chaotic, thought-provoking, and impossible to ignore.