Corinthya

Dark themes, with a sweeter filling.

• Our FMC in this is actually strong and powerful and we get to see that throughout the book. She doesn't suffer too much from the strong so can't have emotions, instead when emotions happen and we have a reluctant reaction it's from trauma.
• The love interests are distinguishable from each other and from the previous books in this series. They are all dealing with their own issues and traumas in different ways, some of which were quite a surprise to me. Even if some of the feelings felt a little violent even when it comes to the romance it still did not tip into the dark romance type which is very much appreciated since it was not classified as such, even if it did deal with some dark themes in the relationship.
• When it comes to conflict this book presented plenty of enemies and even if most of them felt a bit one dimensional and the resolution of their issues felt a bit too fast, we still have the one who turned out to be the main enemy that provided some surprises up until the end, even if I would have enjoyed a more definite conclusion.

This actually had quite a bit of plot and a nice connection to the overall series.

Sweet and uncomplicated

• A fun and slightly too perfect female lead, her only fault was really being different from other society girls. Still despite this she was still fun to read about.
• The love interests are all different and lend something to the story so they were useful.

1. We get some nice pinning for each other, some banter that is actually sexual tension, some trauma that makes it hard to accept the relationship and still we have a nice build up of their relationship with the main female lead.
2. This doesn't fully match the bisexual side, there is still banter but some of the previously established relationships we never really see since they disappear once the new dynamic starts.

• Character focused instead of plot. The biggest conflict we have besides the relationship stuff is minor and solved somewhat easily and since it happens right at the end it didn't fully satisfy that part.

Overall it was a nice read with characters I enjoyed and wouldn't mind seeing again. It does end in a way that leads to a possible other book for some new characters.

This book is part of a series but only because they're in the same world, previous book characters are only mentioned and do not appear.

• We have a FMC that has some romantic trauma, making her a bit insecure and hesitant when it comes to new relationships, this is one of the major "conflicts" of the beginning of the book. Other than that, she is actually assertive and confident once the first issues are mostly solved, making her likeable and somewhat relatable.
• The biggest issue in the book turns out to be the transition of Darren into an Omega and subsequent issues. For me this was well written.
• The other male leads were distinguishable enough that they didn't all blend together for me, still letting me have some i liked less than others.
• The pacing was ok, because we had a lot to deal with before advancing in the romance area it took a while, but once the relationship actually started I felt that some issues just kind of drifted away leaving very little lingering effects and speeding up the whole thing.

It was an enjoyable read.

The details matter.

• The world is fine, the typical alphas are best and omega are next and betas are just there. Nothing groundbreaking just typical.
• When it comes to the characters, some were really good and others just a little flat to me.
• Any of this was broken for me by the writing, the language was good and had some good points, but the big issue was the details.

1. Time was everywhere and very little of it made sense, "they arrived at 12h and 3 hours later it was 4:47..."(not an actual quote) and many other instances where it was one day and the next paragraph it was a completely different day or hour. Just confusing.
2. While the time was passing apparently there were things happening that we only heard about later as if we knew this information.
3. These characters where somehow omniscient and knew things that we ourselves only knew because we got multiple POV's. The amount of times the FMC talked about how Jonah was holding a fracturing pack, but when Joan himself only realized it last chapter was weird. And also this same thought was repeated about 4 times in as many chapters.
4. Some little details kept getting rewritten, very beginning one of the guys cooks when he's stressed (also our FMC) and a few chapters later they couldn't cook for their lives. They made their offices in the second floor and a few chapters later it was the third...

This was a bit of a long rant but for a book that had nice language and premise the writing details really took me out of it.

Short and sweet,

• Mafia man with some serious family trauma that apparently only shows in his profession and all related tendencies and, with his treatment of women. This made for an enjoyable male lead, he was very sweet to the female lead and still showed some toughness outside of that making this somewhat believable.
• Nina is an artist, not only in profession but apparently also in acting, something we get a few scenes of.
• The focus of the book is the characters, mostly their relationship so we don't have a very defined conflict to drive the story. We have a few encounters with some "bad guys" and any altercations are solved by our "good" mafia guys.
• It's a fast paced story that despite talking about some serious issues keeps it light and breezes right through the process of recovery.

I'm here for the romance so that was satisfying.

A dragged out and unsatisfying end.

• A bad guy that has been talked about and feared for decades, amassed an unnatural amount of power and followers, is willing to sacrifice everything to.... appear all of 3 chapters and die in 5 hits without causing any damage to our main characters. Underwhelming.
• Relationships that have been established since the first meeting and lend very little to the actual story. Even the intimate scenes sometimes felt they came at the wrong time and messed with the rhythm of the plot.
• There were some points that were inconsistent, one moment we get information about some details and then they just forget about it and have to learn the same thing again.

In conclusion, I only finished it to see if there were any surprises coming but it left me feeling bored, like very little happened.

Keep on keeping on slowly.

• Not much development in the worldbuilding, which from the works I've read it's not uncommon with this author.
• As for the main character I don't see much change, but we did get a few more shows of her being powerful as it was said before.
• When it comes to the love interests I still have a bit of a hard time distinguishing between them when it's not explicitly indicated. The psychotic personalities don't feel very true to description.
• The conflict is still not very present this book, mostly we have a boogeyman type of villain that hasn't appeared even after we heard about him a lot. Only a few instances that still seem more psychological and still doesn't feel very threatening for me.

Slowly and still not super satisfying but because it doesn't feel finished enough I'll keep reading.

An okay start.

• The worldbuilding is being done slowly as this focuses more on the characters but we still get a rough idea of how it is set up, still left me some questions that i hope are answered in the next books.
• Our female main character starts out somewhat self aware but as the story goes on she seems to lose some of that. She is supposed to be strong but we only see it a few times, mostly we hear about the fact from her.
• The love interests seem too similar to each other so except when we are told who we are interacting with I personally can't tell. Despite that they seem likeable enough.
• As for the conflict, this book feels more like setup the whole way, we hear about a bad guy and suffer minor mental damages but it doesn't feel like it has started yet.

I'll keep going but hope there are some developments of these points.