A review by _elliereads
Arranged Deception by CC Monroe

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 (see spice scale on my instagram)

“Don’t you ever threaten to leave me, Emelia. You are mine, and I would hunt you down to the ends of this fucking earth if you ever tried to hide.”

Emilia, a mob boss’s daughter is forced to marry Nico, a mob boss himself. Emilia’s father wants to use her to get information on Nico’s outfit so he can destroy it from within. However, Emilia having been abused by her father since forever, quickly finds some sort of safe haven with Nico and doesn’t want to help her abusive father anymore. Emilia and Nico hate each other but are also crazy attracted to each other.. will there marriage become real and will they survive their enemies? 

Boy did I love this book! Nico is HAAAAWT!! I absolutely loved Emilia en Nico together. Their banter is A+ and there is so much sexual tension between these two. Sparks fly when they get together. And when he threw in a “my wife” I was done. 

I’m a big mafia romance lover and this was everything a good mafia romance should be. Do check trigger warnings before reading this as it is on the darker side. 

Plotwise it made me think of Cora Reilly‘s Bound By Honor which is one of my all time favorite books so that’s high praise coming from me 🤣

The thing with dark mafia romance is that you can’t take it to seriously… I feel like a lot of people think it’s over the top or that there’s no storyline but you’re just reading it with the wrong mindset. A forced marriage between a mob princess and a mob boss who definitely do not like each other. The marriage is obviously just a means to an end and then suddenly they start to like each other more than lust for each other (although the lust never dies). The guys are always smoking hot and so extremely sexy in a crazy dark way. And the women usually very feisty. 

This book had all of that along with some crazy mafia related scenes (⚠️ TW)

The sex was often, spicy and a touch darker. There was a scene with a gun and a window.. just dropping that here to end this review.