Forget-Me-Not Bombshell by Peckham and Valenti

Okay, this one needs no preamble, I’m just gonna jump in, but be aware there may be an excessive amount of profanity in this review.

THIS WAS AMAZING! I mean, I’m not surprised at all, Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti are an absolutely genius, unstoppable dream team. I have loved this whole series so far, and I’ve loved getting to discover new to me authors, but I just knew before this one came out that it was going to be a tier all its own. And I was not disappointed.

Forget-Me-Not Bombshell is the penultimate book in the Mafia Wars world and follows Anya Volkov, the Russian mafia princess from Las Vegas, as she is shipped off to London to marry Danny Butcher, leader of the Firm.

Now, this isn’t really a spoiler considering the sisters promoted the shit out of this book for so long, but Anya does NOT marry Danny Butcher, she marries his twin brother Benny who just got out of prison. But, no one except Benny’s best friend Church knows the truth at the beginning. Well, Church and Danny, but considering he’s being held captive, he doesn’t really count. At first.

This story was a fucking ride. The plot was precise and well thought out and executed but still wild. There are multiple enemies, multiple roadblocks, and a LOT of really amazing relationship growth between Anya and her three guys: Benny, Church, and Frank.

As far as I know this is the first book the sisters have written that’s based in their home country, so it feels like they had an extra dose of fun writing it. The level of British-ness was amazing. The vernacular of the characters was delightful. And as per usual, the whole story was rife with angst, smut, and hilarity. I laughed so much through this, maybe even more than the amount of times I was practically shaking with anxiety and panic over what was going to happen. I fucking cried a handful of times, too. It was an emotional rollercoaster to be sure.

I’m pretty sure this was the longest book in the series so far, too. And the sisters split it into three parts, which according to their TikToks was done so they could slip in some of their patented gut wrenching cliff hangers. Thankfully we got to just keep reading, though, as opposed to the agonizing waiting we have to do for all their ongoing series.

A few of the books before this one were my favorite during their time, but now I can honestly say this one was my favorite. They’re all amazing in their own ways. Each book is it’s own beautiful work of art. But damn, these sisters are a breed of wordsmith unparalleled by any other.

5 stars are NOT enough

Wilted Orchid by Loxley Savage

Mafia Wars book 4 time! I’m loving that as we get further into this series, more and more characters become familiar before their individual book. Wilted Orchid follows Valentina, the younger sister of Lucien, Raphael, and Gabriel Rossi who were the love interests in book 3. Valentina is taken to Chicago to be married into the Moretti family, whose little sister Lily we met in book 2.

Valentina has spent most of her life basically hidden away. She’s fully aware of the true nature of her father and brother’s work, but she is removed from it. And she has no idea that the day she turns 18 she’s going to be practically kidnapped from her school and shipped off to be married to one of her family’s worst enemies.

Sal, Fausto, and Armani each have a different way of handling this situation. Sal is a total douche bag who treats Val with an upsetting level of contempt and disrespect, while the twins warm up to and eventually fall for Val fairly quickly. Things definitely progress, especially between her and Sal. The way their dynamic shifts was honestly so sweet.

This was probably one of my absolute favorites from this series so far. There were a couple of things left kind of unanswered, but nothing too crucial to the plot so I can overlook it given how amazing the story was in general.

Gunmetal Lily (Mafia Wars 2) by Rebecca Royce

Book 2 of the Mafia Wars series sees Lily, daughter of the Italian mafia, married off to Alejandro Hernandez, heir to the Mexican Cartel and eldest brother of Rosa, the heroine of book 1.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this installment. There wasn’t a whole lot of conflict in the actual romance of the story, and while the external conflict was interesting and handled in a satisfying way, it just sort of fell flat. I would have liked to see a bit more struggle between Lily and Alejandro, though I will admit seeing a strong bond from the get go was pretty nice.

The writing style felt a little off to me but I can’t quite put my finger on why. But my biggest complaint here is the plot point that led to this becoming a reverse harem. Alejandro was the victim of extreme sexual abuse as a child and as a result, has never been able to experience sexual arousal. To keep this from negatively affecting his new wife he asks his younger brothers to take care of keeping her sexually satisfied. This quickly led to Lily and the brothers falling hard for each other. I did love that in spite of being unable to be together physically, Lily and Alejandro formed a strong emotional bond, and eventually that last barrier was overcome. But that in itself is what rubbed me the wrong way. While I understand books like this are meant to have lots of smut and heat I still would have loved to see this used as an opportunity to show that a passionate and romantic relationship does not need to involve sex to be complete.

All in all this was a pretty good story. The characters are easy to love and there were plenty of moments I greatly enjoyed. My issues with this story are my own and while I did end up rating this 4/5 stars I didn’t let those issues get in the way of my overall enjoyment of the book.

Binding Rose (Mafia Wars 1) by Ivy Fox

Binding Rose is the first in a new and exciting collaborative series which each book being written by a different author. The series centers around a world of mafias and mobs that had once been at war. There were terrible losses on every side until the leaders of each organization sat down to put an end to it all. An agreement was made for each family to sacrifice a daughter to be married into another family, thus binding them all in a permanent way. These daughters were not given a say in the matter and their future husbands were all chosen at random. The series begins ten years later with the first of these arranged marriages.

Rosa Hernandez is the only daughter of the notorious Mexican cartel. She’s known all along that she was destined to marry Tiernan Kelly, heir to the Irish mob in Boston. She’s not happy about it, but she obeys, knowing she doesn’t really have a choice.

I almost gave his first installment four stars simply because Tiernan drove me nuts, but I was pleasantly surprised by how he grew over the course of the story. I knew going in that while these daughters are marrying one man, each book is going to be a reverse harem, and I’m excited to see how each story handles that, especially after this one. The progression of Rose’s relationship with not just her husband but his brother and cousin was natural and sweet, and though the conflict was gutwrenching and angsty, I greatly enjoyed the resolution.

This promises to be a really fun series. We meet and/or see characters from future books in this first book, and I’m very intrigued to see how these characters might be written across multiple authors.