2.5 Eh, I guess. So much to say. So, clearly, I'm in the minority on this one because there are five star reviews out the wazoo, but mama said there'd be days like this. :)
First off, thank you to the authors for giving us a love interest of color. I asked at the end of my last review, but this book was already written so the writers were way ahead of me. Yay! Having said that, while I appreciate that the authors tried to broaden the characters, this book is exactly the type of book that makes me go 'be careful what you wish for' after wanting a black love interest to be added to a series. York had brown skin and literally nothing else to indicate that he was any different from a non melanated character. I still don't know what race/ethnicity he was - we know that he had brown skin, warm brown skin, deep brown skin, dark brown skin...Ok! Anything else? Oh yes, he had brown eyes, soulful brown eyes....and that's it! That's all the description we get, along with him being 6'6, in 437 pages. We don't know if he was black, or Latino, or Indian. He had zero identity. And for those going, "I mean, does it matter?" Yes! Yes, it does! Gianpaolo's Italian heritage is a HUGE part of who he is! He felt fully back to his true self when he shed the contacts and bleach blond hair, and went back to his natural eye and hair color. It was part of who he is; it linked him to his brothers, his heritage. I still don't know if York even had hair. Shaved head, curls, locs? Did he have parents/family that could give us some clue to his heritage like we know about Gianpaolo? Or did the stork just drop him off at the Federal Bureau of Investigations fully grown? Lol, but seriously, this graying out of melanated characters is worse than just not writing black and brown people at all. And I'm not saying every series has to have black and brown people, I'm saying it's NICE when we are included. But when we are, include fully actualized characters. Don't just make a character brown and that's it. What is his culture?? Apart from that, literally no one mentioned his skin color EVER. It's like it didn't exist outside of Gianpaolo's need to wax poetic about him. I guess it's supposed to be progressive, but it's just weird! It's an Italian, crime family. He and Melony meet and never acknowledge each other as two brown people in a sea of non black/brown people (and Harlow - who by the way we know all about, down to his long flowing hair). I need to be able to 'see' my characters and not being able to do that with York was frustrating.
Let's talk about the storyline. This book was about 200 pages too long. It doesn't even remotely get interesting until after the 50% mark, and that was largely due to the fact that the authors tried to write 'Paul' as a hugely different personality from 'Gianpaolo' so the change would be dramatic. Well, I spent the whole first half of the book wishing for the reveal because Paul was such a court jester that I couldn't take anything about him seriously, including that bleach blond hair. It made the odds of York giving him the time of day slim to none. Nothing York did in the start of the book made sense given the way York was written, and this meant the whole relationship didn't work. There was zero chemistry between them for me. None. The sex scenes were mediocre and I was just praying to move things along. At 50% the sole interesting thing in this book was York's relationship with his daughters and 'Paul' meeting them.
Then, 'Paolo' is revealed and THANK GOD because I finally felt like I was reading the book I signed up for. The chemistry between Paolo and York was MUCH better. Loved the girls, and Paolo's fierce protective streak, even though him calling the girls his daughters was a bit 'huh' after such a short time. I do like that York put up a decent fight to hold onto his dignity, eventually succumbing to the attraction, but this couple never really reached the level for me that the authors tried to convince me they were at. They were cool; I just never saw them as madly in love and needing each other. Maybe on Paolo's part. I don't know. I think the lame start spoiled things.
As for the story itself, this book suffers the same fate as all books post Book 1. I don't need to be told how crazy the Vitale brothers are at every given turn. Just write them doing violent, possessive things that don't feel solely gratuitous. We are an intelligent audience. I promise you; we get it. Harlow playing such a prominent role in this book, le and sigh. He was such a wasted love interest for Benito that I can't even. When the triad demanded he be handed over to avoid a war, I was like yes, please! Then Benito can get a real husband. Alas, my pleas fell on deaf ears.
Surprisingly, Giancarlo was funny and provided great comic relief in this book; I can do him in small doses. The ending was a bit fantastical. It wasn't like Tex and Enzo where you could see things working out. Nothing about York's personality said this ending would work. But whatevs.
2.5 and as usual, I am promptly re-reading Book 1 as a palette cleanser. It is the lowest rated book in this series (still 4 stars +) but my absolute favorite.