A fun and silly escape
4 stars

I tend to avoid books involving mafia tropes - just not my thing. I mean, how can I believe in an HEA when someone’s likely always going to be trying to kill our hero? I’m sure the life expectancy of a mob boss is fairly short. But I digress.

This audiobook was featured on the Read Me Romance podcast so I gave it a listen.

The book is about Luke who is presumably (although it’s only ever eluded to) some sort of mob boss. He owns mines, apparently. He’s ridiculously smitten with the daughter of another family, Cassandra, and pretty much purchases her as his bride.

But Cassandra isn’t the spoilt princess that we might expect. She doesn’t want to be married to Luke - she just wants to be free. So she decides to kill her new husband - if she could just stop kissing him!

So yes, this is a mafia-type trope - but with a huge dose of hilarious ridiculousness injected into it. I listened to this while out and about and found myself laughing out loud at the wit and clever silliness of this story.

Cassandra was slightly crazy and I loved that about her. Her internal monologues as she debates killing Luke just made me love her all the more. Luke is the archetypal alpha bad boy - well, he’s all man - who’s obsessed with his woman and wants to give her the world. The fact that she wants to kill him is just a cute quirk of her feisty personality, in his eyes!

The chemistry between Cassandra and Luke is borderline filthy. Not too over the top but definitely satisfying. I skipped the 1 anal sex scene but apart from that, was happy.

Mackenzie Cartwright is a great narrator for Cassandra. She’s concise and clear and conveys Cassandra’s personality without ever giving her a whiny edge. Lance Greenfield as Luke has the kind of voice that ears dream of. It’s so deep and gruff and manly. Perfect for Luke and, well, for reading anything and everything, ever.

This was a fun audiobook - a short little diversion into some humour, obsessions, killing and cats. Coming in a few minutes under 3 hours for the audiobook (158 pages for the book), definitely one you can fit in of an evening or afternoon. 4 stars.

Plus I have to add my voice to the ‘why the hell was Gordon Ramsey in this book?’ club. When I realised what was happening I rolled my eyes so hard I could see behind me. Horrible, horrible man. If I was to let Miss Kittles loose on anyone - it would be him! Anyway - I didn’t let it affect my rating. ( )