Pros:
1. The narrators did an excellent job with the many accents used. The only exception is the Chicago mobsters with the New Jersey accents – those were a bit iffy. Otherwise, well done.
2. Interesting premise: The two aging leaders of the Chicago criminal “tribes” (the mafia and the Irish mob) arrange the marriage of their heirs, Melanie and Liam, to bring peace between the two crime families. The twist is that Melanie isn’t the sweet, compliant, spoiled-princess Liam, the rising Irish mob boss, expects but is rather a ruthless leader of her mafia family. How they work it out is the fun part.
Cons:
1. Credulity strained in the amount of mayhem, murder and misery they create with impunity.
2. They are singularly unpleasant sociopaths. They have absolutely no consciences. The “droll” romantic parts are floating in torture and blood and the death of innocents. That does tend to take the shine off. These are two truly evil people who are written for “cute.” I don’t care to read any more of their “romance.”
3. The author absolutely >>loves<< starting sentences with present participle phrases such as, "Grabbing my newspaper, I walked back to the door…" or "Taking a deep breath, I rolled into a ball …"
. Unfortunately too frequently he does so carelessly and we get sentences like, “Running up broken stairs, the heat of a bullet seared me as…” or “Taking a seat beside her, she shook her head at me…” These should, of course, read, “Running up broken stairs I was seared by the heat of a bullet as…” and, “When I took a seat beside her, she shook her head at me..”
. I would say that something like 15 to 20% of the many present participle phrases had sloppy referents. I found it distracting and I was seriously embarrassed for the editor.
Conclusion:
It’s a good premise with potentially interesting characters unfortunately drowned in gratuitous violence committed by the largest gathering of completely amoral sociopaths I’ve ever encountered in a “romance” novel. By the end of the book, I was bored by the evil and ugliness of the hero and heroine (and pretty much everyone else) and the suspension of disbelief required to believe the bloodbath that these people created everywhere they went. I am not interested in the sequels.
Note, if you love the sound of “fv*k” in all its charming permutations, you’ll really enjoy this novel because the paragraph that doesn’t contain several of them is fairly rare.