Mirrigold: Mutterings & Musings

‎Sinful Mafia Prince by Ella Frank & Brooke Blaine

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a conclusion to the romance between Dominic and Luca, this book is excellent.

As a conclusion to the Mafia conflict between their two families, I felt like a big chunk of the story was missing.

The pacing throughout this book is definitely more languid, it’s a slow build up of the barriers Dom has tightly closed around him coming down, it’s a steamy exploration of their attraction.

What it’s not is any kind of explanation about what happens after the big plot twist moment…

***SPOILER***

when Vincenzo kills Luca’s crappy dad in the hospital. There’s no fall out from that at all.

No other appearances from the nut job Mickey who was threatening death to Luca and talking about the “long game” the Fiores bodyguards were supposedly playing. That story element just never gets brought up again.

Neither do we find out what happens to all the leftover Fiores hit men and associates, including Luca’s actual birth mother.

And there’s a significant lack of how the Mafia Prince being gay was received by everyone in the Rossetti family but also all the others as the Epilogue jumps two years ahead.

***SPOILER ENDS***

It was all a tad strange. Still, that’s my main criticism and the rest of the narrative I found worked pretty well as the romantic atmosphere of their getaway location worked its magic.

The book makes no excuses for the violence or Dom’s behaviour, which I found to be a refreshing decision. Dom is a bad man, his family have done bad things, that’s acknowledged and not waved away with platitudes.

Luca falls for Dom in some measure because of those steely traits, not in spite of them and Brooke and Ella also skilfully avoid it feeling like any kind of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ (although that’s its own controversial theory now any way!)

There’s a good bunch of secondary characters and the atmosphere of being in the location is second to none, but this duet rests almost totally on the shoulders of Dom and Luca and the authors carry that off in some style.

#ARC kindly received from the authors via Valentine PR. I voluntarily reviewed this book.

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