Ties That Bind

I didn't enjoy this one. I get that stereotyping is bad but surely we can find more believable typical Russian names for the Russian mafia MC than......Joey.

Joey. Joey and Tony. Sorry, it's giving Italian mafia. Kirt Graves being very ambiguous on the accents in the narration didn't do it any favors either.

The role reversal didn't quite hit for me either. Maybe the book was too short for me to buy that macho chip on the shoulder Joey was the omega. Other than the pregnancy, there's nothing else to sell it. This lacks the certain....softness to the omega that makes omegaverse hit like crack. No neediness, no nesting, no hiding heat, no nothing. Just.... This man is pregnant now. Sigh.

The accents were too similar so I struggled to tell them apart but one part that REALLY got my ears steaming was when they couldn't find MC 1's kid, and naturally he was spiraling about it, and MC 2 says something along the lines of 'I don't know why you're so upset about this, we'll find him.'

Like EXCUSE ME?! That's a lost child. This man just met you, his kid isn't where he was left and you're giving vague reassurances about how he must be somewhere with one of your big meddling family who can't be arsed to communicate, and you're annoyed that he's 'upset'?

Nothing about that was giving 'man you start a family with'.

Plus, somehow this fell into the category of fated mates trope where things progress so frightfully quickly that I wasn't sold on the love. It felt like these two were assigned a partner and then had to make it work.

And we don't even really get to see much of their conflicting lifestyles being an issue. A mafia guy and a social worker? Could have been gold.

Loved the idea, not so much the execution.