Despite the author's warning to not read this book as a standalone, I still did it anyway. I was going to read it chronologically from the first book, I swear, but then read the reviews of that book and I was like fuck no. So I checked out the second book, read the reviews again, and hm ok this one's not for me either, maybe the third one will be it. Third time's a charm, right? Turned out none of the books catch my attention so I just dive in and read this book. Honestly I don't even remember why I put this particular book from this series in my to-read shelf, but ain't nobody got time reading 7 books before reading the one that you actually want to read.
I must admit it's confusing reading about the relationship dynamic in this book without reading the previous books. I read about how Dante seems to really hate Mia and I was like "wait, isn't Mia one of the heroines? Aren't the readers going to hate him for hating on a main character that seems like a totally good girl?" So due to my curiosity I went back and read reviews that contain spoilers from all of the previous books, and man, am I glad that I didn't waste my time reading the entire series. Because from what I've gathered, Mia is an annoying piece of idiotic shit and Mateo is a manwhore on the highest level and most of the series focuses on some kind of a love rectangle that's going on. Fucking hate that.
But I'm here not to review the entire series, only this particular book. I'm okay with what mafia book entails, like murder, torture, drug dealing, etc. But human trafficking is a hard pass for me. That's where I draw the fucking line. How could you expect me to love a hero that sells women and trades them around like a fucking cattle? More importantly, how could a woman writes about a hero like this and still thinks he's redeemable? How could a woman be so disrespectful to other women and even gives the monster his own love story? No fucking way. I know real life is cruel and human trafficking is real, but why don't we just stop romanticizing the monsters that think it's okay to treat women like that? Why don't we stop painting them as a misunderstood redeemable hero, and just leave them as the fucking monsters they really are?
And then as if it's not bad enough, our dear hero actually befriends the son of a bitch Luca. He even brought Colette to Luca's house hoping that she will like him, knowing how Luca keeps slaves there and how he treats them. How dumb can a person be? Doesn't he know how traumatizing it is to be exposed to that kind of cruelty? Of course not, because he's a monster and he thinks it's normal for women to be kept as slaves. Fucking asshole.
Other than the really bad choice for a hero, what made it hard for me to enjoy this book is the non existent plot. What's the story? What is this book even trying to tell? All I get is that the hero and heroine used to have a past and the heroine left and fast forward a few years later the hero wants her back. This is all in the first 10% of the book, and after that, there's nothing going on. They fight, they have sex, they eat, they sleep, repeat. This book should be titled The Fucked Up Mateo and Mia: through Dante's eyes since it feels like the actual focus of the book is these two fuck ups. The majority of the book is Dante observing about Mateo's feeling towards Mia and I DON'T FUCKING CARE OK? If I want to know about Mateo's feeling, I'll read his fucking book. It's very obvious that this author favors Mateo and Mia heavily based on this book alone, and since I hate those two, I really want to stab something whenever Mateo and Mia popped up in a scene.
I can't even remember the last time I get this strung up about a book. I think this author is not safe for me.