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rhargadon 's review for:
Royal Bully & Ruthless Princess
by Rachel Van Dyken
I read this book because I was looking for mafia romance stories in which the FMC is morally gray and/or villainous. This book delivered on that, which is that she is a stabby, rage-fueled, mafia don's daughter.
But there were things that just sort of bothered me.
1) FMCs "hate you so much" did not seem authentic at all. Acting like she hated the MMC while being around him every minute of every day was really juvenile. It was as if we'd given weapons to 13 year olds with crushes on each other. I didn't get the sense of true angst about wanting to be with the MMC, even though she'd only had sex with one other guy ever. She didn't seem like a girl who had grown up too fast and seen too much. She just seemed spoiled and ridiculous and flouncy, which was too bad.
2) the MMC is named Junior, which... this is a mafia romance, and everyone has Italian or Russian mob roots, and his name is **junior**. Maybe it's because I come from a small town in the southern USA, but damn this made me imagine him in overalls and a plaid shirt every-fucking-time, and that was a true buzzkill. "Oh my god yesssssss Junior".... No. No, no, no, no. That being said, MMCs dialogue and sex scenes were good. If you can pretend his name is something else, then you're all set there.
3) The lack of characterization of the surrounding members was also unfortunate. Ash, Breaker, Nixon, Chase... I could not tell you what they look like or anything about them, which is sad because their dialogue and personalities and backstories were fascinating and I wanted more. This only threw into stark light how annoyed I was with our two main characters' situation.
All in all, 3.5 stars from me. Solid mafia romance read that is atypical for the genre.
But there were things that just sort of bothered me.
1) FMCs "hate you so much" did not seem authentic at all. Acting like she hated the MMC while being around him every minute of every day was really juvenile. It was as if we'd given weapons to 13 year olds with crushes on each other. I didn't get the sense of true angst about wanting to be with the MMC, even though she'd only had sex with one other guy ever. She didn't seem like a girl who had grown up too fast and seen too much. She just seemed spoiled and ridiculous and flouncy, which was too bad.
2) the MMC is named Junior, which... this is a mafia romance, and everyone has Italian or Russian mob roots, and his name is **junior**. Maybe it's because I come from a small town in the southern USA, but damn this made me imagine him in overalls and a plaid shirt every-fucking-time, and that was a true buzzkill. "Oh my god yesssssss Junior".... No. No, no, no, no. That being said, MMCs dialogue and sex scenes were good. If you can pretend his name is something else, then you're all set there.
3) The lack of characterization of the surrounding members was also unfortunate. Ash, Breaker, Nixon, Chase... I could not tell you what they look like or anything about them, which is sad because their dialogue and personalities and backstories were fascinating and I wanted more. This only threw into stark light how annoyed I was with our two main characters' situation.
All in all, 3.5 stars from me. Solid mafia romance read that is atypical for the genre.