This wasn’t the worst series I’ve read, but definitely not the best. It ultimately fell a little flat for me. I thought the title, Sunshine and Bullets, was great, but it definitely didn’t live up to its promising title. (M/f, reverse harem, mafia/gang romance, vanilla, quality of spice 2.5/5, quantity of spice 3/5)
This series gave me the “the book ick”- that’s when you start reading a book and think it’s going to be good and you’re liking it, but then all of a sudden you get turned off of either the story or the characters, and after that every little thing starts to annoy you. I can’t pin point when or the exact reason why I started to feel this way; although, it was likely somewhere In between the FMC referring to her own breasts as “perky peaks” and her constant whining and crying. Or maybe it’s when the author writes “ he pours peroxide on a cut just to feel the burn”- like, seriously? Pretty sure most people know that peroxide doesn’t hurt when you pour it on a cut. Having the book ick makes it hard to know if the series is as bad as I think, or if it’s just my perspective due to the ick.
I liked that the first book cleverly flips back and fourth to from present to past in order to tell us important information about the FMC and the sequence of events that led to her disappearing. Unfortunately, I did not like it when the second book also flips back to the past because the flashbacks in this one didn’t give any pertinent information to the story, but only served to leave the reader hanging in suspense and waiting for the present story to continue. Thankfully, the author ditched this style in the 3rd and 4th book. (Yes, there is a 4th book, and although, it gave all the characters a happy ending together, it, too, fell short- especially in the spice department).
I mostly didn’t like this book because the spice was crap. The scenes were quick, unoriginal, few and far between and definitely never reached full potential. There was too many missed opportunities for good smut where the author chose to end the scene right before the characters got spicy leaving the spice implied, but not described- this is a big pet peeve of mine when reading erotic novels. And don’t get me started on the fact that this is a reverse harem but only once did the characters partake in spice all together and it was quick, lacked creativity and did not meet the standards I’m used to for a group spice scene in a reverse harem. The fourth book was the biggest disappointment in this department because it featured a throuple (1 woman and 2 men) where the MMCs were bisexual which had the potential to be super hot, but again, there was barely any spice and what spice there was was quick and very surface level never exploring to the depth of smut it could have been- if that makes sense (I’m trying to keep it somewhat clean).
Like I said, this series was not the best nor the worst writing, but it was just mediocre.