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2.5 Stars
4 Spice
**VERY DARK. Read Trigger Warnings**
Athena has no idea what future awaits her when she tries to break in to the fortress of Luca "Bones" Bonetti in hopes of stealing his car for her boyfriend. Bones quickly catches her and brings her inside, with a plan to take her life for her discretion. But when he plans to deal with her as he deals with everyone who crosses him - he quickly learns Athena is very different from anyone else he'd every encountered, and his sudden desire to know everything about her crosses over into complete obsession.

Honestly - I was disappointed. I had seen this book recommended on Tik Tok and when I was told it was a dark mafia romance, of course I thought it was right up my alley. IMMEDIATELY, and for no reason at all, Bones starts in with a nickname - Butterfly. Now, I love nick names and I think Butterfly is super cute. But the reason he calls her that is flimsy at best. And then he NEVER STOPS USING IT. Again, I like nicknames and it makes sense he'd use it more than her given name, but he uses it when he doesn't need to. You use a nickname in place of a given name - not in every sentence. Also, the main climax of the book happens at about 60% in, and the rest of the book feels rushed. And then there's a random twist that was completely unnecessary and adds nothing to the story. Honestly, the "twist" scene could have switched places with the climax and I think it would have flowed better. It was also clear the Bonetti brothers were mentioned as a way to introduce more books in the series, but there was nothing to really build their characters - zero connection.

I did like how Athena was described and how she worked through her trauma with Bones. Again, it seemed a lot of additional things were added at the end, which I don't know was necessary because her life was literal hell being held captive by her father, abandoned by her mother, and her first boyfriend-ish person also abandoning her and making her feel worthless when she asked him for help. I don't know that we needed to randomly add "also she can't read" at the very end of the book. Does it make sense given her captivity - yes. But maybe we should have mentioned it earlier so it didn't feel like we were just throwing things in at the end.