🌶️ 3.5
Tags: age gap, brothers best friend, morally grey, mafia fuck it moment, pierced MMC, plus sized FMC,
This was a complicated read for me—one where the emotional journey was largely engaging, but the final destination just didn’t work for my personal taste.
Up front, the pacing felt a little wonky, especially as Daniella’s life completely implodes. She’s put through absolute hell and made to pay for transgressions she did not commit, which made it hard not to immediately feel for her. After her parents’ deaths shortly before she graduates college, she’s rushed into a marriage in the interim, and that emotional whiplash sets the tone for much of the story.
Daniella is a pseudo mafia princess who has spent most of her life sent away to boarding school for her own safety, and that deep-rooted loneliness is palpable. You can feel how badly she wants a sense of belonging. Her body image struggles were very real and very relatable, and I appreciated seeing a plus-sized FMC whose insecurities weren’t magically erased overnight.
Matteo—best friend to Daniella’s brother and thirteen years her senior—is very much a guard-dog hero. He sticks by the people who matter to him, and once Daniella is in his orbit, his loyalty is unshakeable. He’s pierced, an underground fighter, commitment-phobic, and dyslexic, and the shame he carries from his childhood—particularly from his father—is genuinely heartbreaking. His growth over the course of the book was remarkable. By the end, there’s no doubt that his love for Daniella is deep, fierce, and unbreakable. He makes her feel like a goddess, which I absolutely loved.
That said, I struggled with some choices along the way. I was especially frustrated that Matteo didn’t truly acknowledge how isolating it was for Daniella to be stuck alone in the apartment all day while he avoided her due to his own issues. I understand why it was necessary for the plot, but a little self-awareness on his part would have gone a long way.
There’s a definite “fuck it” moment, and while I wouldn’t call this instalove, Matteo does an about-face that left me uneasy. I like instalove, but here it felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop—especially once the “I love yous” started flying. That nervousness turned out to be justified.
Daniella’s strength deserves its own mention. She went through hell, and it never broke her. She didn’t dwell, didn’t wallow—and for a 22-year-old character, that kind of resilience is something else. I do wish I had more concrete data points about her personality beyond her trauma and endurance, though.
Unfortunately, this book ended with one of my least favorite tropes. While I’d say about 85% of the story was emotionally engaging and genuinely well done, the ending felt unfair—even if everyone made the best of it. Because of that, this ultimately wasn’t a book I’d recommend, though that doesn’t mean it wasn’t written well.
I intentionally avoided the trigger warnings because they were labeled as spoilers, and I’m generally very open—but I do think the SA trigger should have been included upfront. The specific trigger I missed would have been a spoiler regardless, but I still wish I’d known going in.
An emotional, well-crafted journey—just not one that landed where I wanted it to.