This entire book is just the “crime, penetration, crime, penetration” joke from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia but played completely straight.

Okay, calling the Polish-mafia run stripper club "The Pole" is kinda funny

Also the TikTok advertising for this book was SO annoying- they were all some woman like “If you don’t like toxic, age-gap, spicy mafia romances, then GET OUT. This book isnt for you”

Can confirm, daddy issues goes away the minute you talk to your father for the first time in 30 years... To bad I have to break up with my mafia boyfriend now

1000% convinced that enemies to lovers just means I hate you until I see you with your shirt off.

new bit of lore: james used to live next to a strip club

Be honest, Griffins and Gallo(w)s sound more like a pair of rejected Hogwarts House names than mafia families

I'm gonna be very honest, everytime the last name Gallo was mentioned I couldn't help but snicker. It means chicken in italian. You guys do whatever you will with this

This book feels like a weird mashup of Romeo and Juliet and Taming of the Shrew with gangsters.

I don't know about adult women, but my grandma definitely loves these kinds of books. Admittedly, her dark romance collection is centered more on the 'kidnapped by a prince from a strongly patriarchal monarchy that is definitely not the UAE' theme, but that's ultimately just window-dressing.

Not that it would improve the big problem that Cal is just not a sexy character, but there were at least a couple of missed opportunities to give Aida some agency. Like, when Cal takes all her clothes to force her to wear the dress, Aida wears one of Cal's suits, or rips down a curtain and makes her own dress. Or instead of eating the strawberries as a petty prank to make him look bad in the wedding photos, she does it so he can't force himself on her (Fuck, maybe she even IS trying to kill him? A story where the two love-interests repeatedly try to murder each other and then realise they're actually two psychopaths flirting would at least be interesting!)

“Polish is an insult to the concept of spoken language.” That’s a spicy take.

BRAZILIAN WAX WHILE UNCONSCIOUS ACTUALLY MADE MY JAW DROP. dropped my phone on my FACE.

honestly as someone who partakes in "problematic" romance fiction but is also able to maintain normal relationships irl, the appeal is mostly in the absurdity of it all. its why stories like this bother me, ones that can't like entirely commit to the male lead being evil fr. im so tired of these stories where he's just the same as any misogynist i can find on the street corner but in a different outfit. the best stories are ones where the men are unhinged to a degree i can't see a real person actually doing these things and the story doesnt make excuses about him not being that bad actually. imo that's the whole point of it being  "fantasy", its meant to be something that can only live as a fantasy.

As someone from Southern Italy, I really don’t get the mafia romances. There’s nothing sexy and about criminals who made regions miserable for generations.

Why does it feel like I need to mentally add 3 years to an adult character?

Saying "the Italians" or "the Columbians" is like when westerners talk about "Arabs" as if they're all on the same side. Like, there were five major families just in NYC and there were dozens of other smaller factions within those families and they all constantly changed alliances. The Godfather was about a war between just Italians, specifically sicilians, Peaky Blinders touched on a lot of different cultures because it was often safer to work with foreign organizations, the closer the proximity the more likely they'd benefit from getting rid of the other.

the lee harvey oswald line is W I L D

26:06 they inmediately have sex after she shot him in the arm?! Forget the anger that would be logical to feel in that situation, does the guy at least puts a bandaid over the wound before he starts the plowing?! WTF?!

Dear God the bar is in HELL when it comes to books like this.