Sara has written a bully/mafia romance. It sounds like it wouldn’t work together, but it really does. Vendetta manages to switch from a bully to the mafia rather well, I think. And with this book, Sara has joined Jennifer Bene and Cari Silverwood in writing a disturbingly hot gun scene. I mean, hot, and disturbing. What does that say about me?
So, here’s our story. We have Col, who is the bastard son of a mafia boss. He has been hiding in plain sight, under a different name. Now, he’s 20 and about to graduate from a fancy academy in Connecticut. He tends to stay to himself while he’s there. In fact, he tends to stay to himself everywhere. He lives with his guards and cook at his house. The closest thing he has to a father is his Bio teacher who has trained Col and guarded him his entire life. Then, there’s Blaire. When he was a kid, he and Giordino were headed to a restaurant when Col saw a beautiful little girl standing at the backdoor of the place they were headed. He talked Giordino into taking her into have dinner with him, and finally finding jobs for her parents. Now, she goes to the same academy as Col.
Blaire is a senior too, even though she’s a couple of years younger than Col. She’s also the queen bee at the school. She has built up people and ruined them. She’ll do everything she can to make sure that she gets what she wants, up to and including digging up all the dirt she can on anyone. When her parents go out of town, she has big parties. Her parents don’t care, so she throws huge bashes with booze, drugs, and hot and cold running sex. This night, she’s going to have another big party, and Col is going to ignore it, except he hears her boyfriend making plans to drug her and rape her. Since Col’s her protector, even if she doesn’t necessarily know it, he has to go to the party and save her.
The two of them together are explosive. They are very much nitro and glycerin, shaken, not stirred. It doesn’t matter if they are mad at each other or happy, there is just a lot of chemistry between them the whole time.
I think that Blaire was a little naive. I mean, she walked into a situation where she thought that she had all the power but she had nothing. She didn’t know what was going on and worse yet, she didn’t even have an idea as to what the repercussions of her actions would be. I mean, I like her, I think she learns her power and her strength as the book goes on, but she starts out kinda naive.
Col was harder for me to like, at least at first. He really tries hard to hold a wall in between him and the rest of the world. A couple of chapters in, and I started to get a better grip on him, and a better understanding of why he was the way that he was. He is a very forceful character.
The whole teaching Col a lesson thing really paid off for Blaire.
OK, that’s all I have to say about this one. Go check it out! Happy reading!
In Between the Pages 