Dangerous Royals Romance #2 | 233 Pages | Suspense Romance | Release Date: 07/16/2016
The first book in the Dangerous Royals series really pulled me in with it’s grit, high stakes and constant twists and turns. I was so ready for the sequel but Wicked Mafia Prince was just….it has some odd choices. I mean…. it’s basically about a Russian mobster that saves a nun from a brothel and then competes with Jesus for her attention by doing things like….chaining her in a bedroom, throwing her clothes into a fire and forcing her to eat cake.
Okay, let me back up.
22-year-old Russian mobster Viktor Dragusha is ready to take down Bloody Lazarus, the man that killed his parents and separated he and his brothers 20 years ago. As he and his brother begin to infiltrate Lazarus’s online virgin auction Viktor recognizes a nun up for auction as his ex-girlfriend, Tanechka. Which is odd because he’s pretty sure he killed her three years ago when the Russian mob made him push her off a gorge.
That’s right, it’s amnesia time, ya’ll !
So for most of this book Tanechka only remembers the last few years of her life when she was taken in by Eastern Orthodox nuns. She’s now extremely religious and very orthodox and Viktor comes off as a real psycho bully as he tries to make her remember the violent mob assassin she once was.The only reason this book didn’t end up in the DNF pile is because the book itself seems to recognize how he treats her is wrong and towards the end she gets a bit of agency, but some of the earlier sections were real rough.
Speaking of choices at one point Martin gives Bloody Lazarus, the bad guy, a couple of chapters in which he…uses an online executive coach to help him… run the mob better ? It read as real odd and I didn’t feel like she captured the voice quite right, Lazarus has to be at least in his 40’s but he read much younger. I really didn’t understand why Lazarus’ POV was in there but in the back of the book she says that he’s getting his own book so I guess she was testing the waters.
Low in romance, high in suspense this book just left a bad taste in my mouth.
SIDENOTE
I looked more into Martin after reading this book and her best selling book is dubious consent novel abouta woman kidnapped by a fugitiveand she has a series calledTaken Hostage by The Kinky Bank Robbersso I think some of my weirdness about consent in this book is YMMV. Clicking around I am learning ‘kidnapped heroine falls for captor’ is a genre I did not know existed…which explains a lot about these books.
I think I am going to finish this series (and not just because I already bought the last one for .99 a few months ago). I’d heard this book was the weakest of the series and I’m curious to see what she’ll do with the third brother who was abandoned in the woods as a child.