5 stars! Spoiler-free.

Wow. Just wow. This book was everything I needed. It doesn’t even compare to the last 5 books I’ve read.

PLOT/CHARACTERS:
This book is about Morana Vitalio, a girl who has been raised by a father, a mafia leader (who raised her very harshly). She lives in a setting that contains a hierarchical society of mafia. Morana has lost a set of codes that contain important information about all of the wealthy/dangerous families in the city, and she needs to recover them for her own sake, as well as society’s. She tracks who could have taken these codes, and her leads all result in Tristan Caine. So, she corners him, and he (for some reason later revealed) lets her live, but this reason is unknown for now. He claims her life, saying no one is allowed to kill her, and Morana understands he has deep-rooted hatred for her, though she doesn’t know why. There’s so much tension and want between them as they keep running into each other over time. Secrets unfold, bonds break, and danger is impending.

Commendations:

• The characters were so well-developed. The backstories were immaculate. I love how the author chose to employ just a few characters in the story (Tristan, Amara, Morana, Declan, Morana’s father), so it’s not confusing. This especially was so well done. I didn’t get confused, even for a second, about any scene in this book. (Props to the editor, too).

• The plotline was AMAZING. I love how it didn’t just follow the basic structure of introduction, rising tension, build-up, climax, and resolution, but embedded side-plots of romance, character development, and character relationship scenes, where you get to see certain people grow.

• This book never gets boring. The beginning immediately hooks you, and this is sustained all the way through until the end. This was one of the only times I finished a book and then went “IT’S OVER?” and double-checked just in case. God, I can’t get enough of this series. It’s actually to the point that I’m sorry I didn’t read it earlier.

• It’s so unpredictable. This is such a massive factor when reading a book. You never know what’s coming next. It could range from an action scene to a romance scene to a heart-wrenching one.

Improvements:

• I say this every time, but first-person narration is SO important to me. Reading third-person feels impersonal and distanced. It doesn’t take anything away from the book, I still enjoyed it beyond words, but the suggestion is there.

• At the start, the whole “Tristan pinned Morana against ____” got very repetitive. I just felt like I was reading WattPad (even though I’ve actually ever only read one story from there, but I’m going by the stereotypical stories/fanfics on the site). That was a slight ick, but I got over it very quickly.

Funnily enough, I only cried once, and it was during Morana’s why do you hate me? monologue. There were too many contained emotions there and I felt as mentally claustrophobic as Morana was in that scene.