A review by ravensandlace
Shamrocks and Secrets by Cayce Poponea

3.0

Title: Shamrocks and Secrets

Author: Cayce Poponea

Genre: Romance

Format: ebook

Series: Code of Silence (#1)

Star Rating: 3 stars

tw: death of a loved one, drugs, assault, guns, death, implications of murder, abusive relationship resulting in death, slut shaming, misogyny, blood

This book was not that great, I’m just going to come right out and say it. I don’t like being this harsh but I am an honest girl and if a book is not good, I’m going to let the people know. It had the promise of being a terrific spicy book but it had two glaring problems that I simply couldn’t overcome. They took me out of the story and I was just frustrated by the whole thing. 

One of my biggest problems was the main character, Christi. I liked her at first but then she met Patrick and she did a 180 and became one of the whiniest main characters I’ve ever met. I could have sworn we were dealing with a teenager instead of an adult. She was horrifically rude to Patrick and led him on. Patrick would do all these lovely things, respected her space, and was all around a nice dude for being in the Irish Mafia. Sure, the way they first met and their history was kind of suspicious it wasn’t horrible by any means. Christi was like no you don’t care about me at all and you're a man whore despite Patrick repeatedly showing her he wasn’t and him doing all these things she wanted him to do but then she would get furious about it. It was beyond frustrating to read and it made me furious. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s when someone constantly leads someone on, gets mad when they do things to show they care (Patrick even asked her what she wants him to do) and then dares to claim they don’t care about them at all. That crap annoys me, especially coming from an adult. 

My other qualm was the timing and pacing of the book. There were a ton of time jumps and Christi would then have to explain what happens during those time jumps instead of just having the events happen. I would get so confused and I thought I was missing something. There were a few times I thought my Kindle book was messed up because there were things that happened off-page but were important to the story but we didn’t find out about those events until Christi casually mentioned them. 

Overall, this wasn’t the best book. The spicy scenes, when they finally happened, did not make up for it at all. I was just not impressed with this book at all and will probably not continue with the rest of the series unless I am told they get better. I may continue if Christi isn’t in the books but from what I’ve read, she’s a vital character to this series so the chances of me finishing this series are pretty slim.