My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Aside from the fact that I personally wasn’t in the mood for
a series and inadvertently jumped headfirst into one, the book sort of
lived up to the spice hype. The first few chapters were difficult to get
through. Pushing past that I found myself curious to see how Rafe and Isa’s
relationship was going to unfold.
Of course, with this book being labeled as a “Dark Mafia
Romance” Rafe does questionable things. He is controlling, manipulative,
murders people. Our heroine of the story is kind of bland but an okay
character. One that is given a massive boon in likeability by the fact that I absolutely
HATE her twin sister. Personally, I think both characters have good chemistry
together but the world that is built around them with this story leaves something
to be desired.
In the initial aftermath of completing this book I was kind of riding the book high and not thinking past the fact that the story wasn’t finished, and I was unhappy with not getting a HEA. Given a bit more time to digest what occurs I realize that this book isn’t really a “Dark Romance”. Yes, there is a Mafia hottie who does bad things. Yes, he’s killed people. Yes, he’s rich. Yes, he has a stalker like approach to Isa. But having those elements does not lend enough substance to the story to make it believable nor give the story any real since of dark urgency. We are told that Rafe is a dark twisted badass, but it rarely ever seems like he truly is one. Combine that with Isa’s good girl but somehow has a dark secret to be uncovered, the story is kind of eye rolling in retrospect. I don’t want to bash on the story because as fluff or popcorn read its fine. And some of the smut in this story was pretty damn good.
But overall, I can’t help but laugh at some aspects. Like how when Isa is
explaining her fear water. The story seemingly out of nowhere takes on a wannabe
supernatural fated tone that is never referenced previously. And is something I
actually snickered at out loud while reading. On that same note I did find
myself wanting to find out things. Like what happened between her and her twin?
Why does her twin hate her enough to roofie Isa? Why does she have that scar?
But pretty much anything I wanted the answer to is never fully addressed or
answered. It is seemingly teased out into the next books. And in full honesty I
don’t care enough to want to read those right now. I’d literally rather just
read a spoiler to find out and move on to another book.
That being said this is far from the worst story I have ever read. It has good chemistry between the two leads. The smut is actually beyond decent and there are times when reading you are okay with being along for the ride. Its afterwards that you realize you didn’t quite get what you signed up for and that book one and at least book two should have probably been combined. And book one probably should have been edited down a bit to help with the flow.
The rest of the series will be linked below. Maybe one day I will dive back in and finish them.
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