Duet review
I will lead my review by saying that dark romances are not my favorite genre to read, but I will try to be fair. In fairness, there is really nothing wrong with the writing itself. The characters are well developed and the plot moves at a slow, but ok pace. I didn't really understand why everything was such a big deal and made out to be the end of the world. The only exception to that was the Quinn sideline because he deserved everything he got. But WHY didn't the mafia seniors want their ADULT children to know what was going on? The explanation was too vague for how big a deal was made over it.
So let's talk about a few things. The 1st is that Cian ends up being the head of his Mafia because his dad gets killed. But for the rest of the story he barely has any thing to do with the people that he leads. That's just too weird. He would be having to set himself up as the boss in more ways than delegating who's gonna do what. Yet, that didn't really happen. A phone call here or a conversation in person there was about it. The reason I feel like this is important is because at the end they decide they're going to form their own mafia. I didn't understand how Cian was going to form his own mafia when he was already the head of his crime syndicate. They didn't talk about him handing over the reins to somebody else. Which brings me to Victoria. The same thing kind of applies to her. She's supposed to take over her family syndicate. Yet, she's going to form her own group with the guys too? Gianluca and Luke are royalty, so they get a pass on forming their own mafia. Anyway, I feel like the conclusion was really rushed. It's like they do the ceremonies that basically have them all married to each other and then the story jumps 2 years into the future. We don't know anything that's happened in that amount of time. We don't know if they did end up forming their own mafia and how it came to be. We don't know what happened with the appearance of the half-sister and how she plays into everything. The story just ends. The conclusion left too many questions.
Finally, I wanna say the things that I just didn't like as a personal preference and not due to the writing itself. I don't like when characters go out and purposely lure victims so that they can beat them up and kill them. I understand that this is a Mafia story, but I would think that they wouldn't go out into public places and start stuff that ends in murder just because they feel like being violent at that moment in time. I'm not saying a Mafia isn't violent. But there's usually a purpose behind their violence. They wouldn't go out and randomly try to draw attention to themselves Or at least that's what I would assume. I also didn't like the sex scenes. Again, this is my personal opinion. But I like there to be romance in my sex scenes. There was absolutely no romance in the sex scenes in this series. It was basically all violent sex. And while I can see a scene or 2 being that way, it was a turn off that there was no loving, intimate sex scenes. It was all name calling and shaming. Possession and dominance. Not 1 of her 3 guys was romantic and loving. You would think that with 3 of them to choose from they wouldn't all be identical in how they treated her. Yes, Victoria supposedly liked it. I just didn't care for it because it didn't feel loving. Again, it might be fun to be violent occasionally in sex. But to never let there be any true intimacy to it? Just not my thing.
I usually really like books by this author. While there is nothing wrong with this duet, it's definitely not 1 of my favorites. I usually like them much more than this.