Please read trigger warnings before choosing this book!
I love a good mafia/dark romance book, just like everyone else, however, for me this book didn’t really tickle my fancy, I am not 100% sure whether it is the writing or whether it is just me, but nothing seemed to really click into place. This book had a wonderful plotline that kept me entertained enough to finish this book within a day, which does not happen very often, nonetheless, the part that is lowering my rating for this novel is unfortunately the writing. I had seen this book all over my TikTok and after a while I decided that it was finally time for me to give it a go, at many points in this story I felt myself needing to take a break just to comprehend what was even happening, there was a lot of miscommunication between Rafael and Jessica throughout the book, which, in my case is not something I particularly enjoy, even so, don’t let this put you off reading the book. When I had finished reading, I felt that there had been hardly any character development and I did not fully feel the relationship between Jessica and Rafael had expanded and I felt there was not enough exploration and depth to their love for one another.
Rafeal is the second son of the current capo Emmanuel Santino, at age 24/25 he is older than Jessica’s ripe old age of 18, and as we all know, I do love a good age gap romance. We are introduced to him during chapter one when Jessica enters her father’s office, who is an underboss of the Santino mafia, and is told that she will be married in only a few months’ time to Rafael. In this chapter Rafael seems to be quite cold and quiet, however, we do see a sweeter side to him when him and Jessica are left alone.
Jessica is seen as a quiet and slightly demure FMC, although, she does have a wild side to her too. In chapter 2 she goes through a horrific ordeal at the hands of her future father-in-law, this is the major plot point of the story, I felt that the way this part of the book was very well handled by Isa Oliver and was done with enough sensitivity in mind. Once Rafael finds out what has been done to Jessica, he is rightfully angry at his father, and tries everything he can to make it up to Jessica, but he is riddled with the guilt of not being able to protect her. Later, in the book Rafael and Jessica have a little blip in their relationship and this was due to both of them being in their heads about their feelings instead of communicating them to one another. For me this is a deal breaker in books as I cannot stand when couples don’t communicate but for the plot to continue, I understood why this was put in place.
As I wrote in the first paragraph what is giving this story a lower rating is the writing, it at times felt like I was reading a Wattpad story, not that I have anything against them as that is where I started my reading journey and there are many good stories on there, but, for me if I am reading a published book I tend to have higher expectations of that author. Nonetheless, I did enjoy this book and if someone wanted a quick read, with mafia romance being the overall theme, this would be a good one to look at.
Overall Rating: 3/5
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