A NEW MAFIA ROMANCE SERIESAgainst his father’s wishes, Trey Pagano made a choice to join the other side of his family and stand with Don Nick Pagano, head of the Pagano Brothers, the most powerful Family in New England. Now he strives to find the balance between these two sides of himself, between the father who raised him and the don who means to lift him up.Seeking the brightest mind to keep … brightest mind to keep his secrets, Don Pagano recruited Lara Dumas, a woman with a brilliant intellect bound up in a damaged mind and frail body. Lara has carefully constructed a small world for herself in a comfortable corner of Providence, building boundaries within her limits.
When Lara is hurt by Pagano Brothers’ enemies, the safety of her world is destroyed. The don assigns Trey to take her away and protect her—and the things she knows.
Hundreds of miles from home, hidden from danger and cut off from everything they know and trust, Trey and Laura grow close. Against his better judgment, Trey falls for the woman whose strength shines through the cracks in her psyche. Despite her trauma, Lara comes to trust the man who’s kept her safe.
Whether the bond they forge in safety can survive when they return to the world is a matter of faith—in themselves and in each other.
Note: Explicit sex and violence.
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Trey was just a kid in Footsteps and after following his arc throughout the Pagano Family series I couldn’t wait for his story.
Simple Faith is an extension of the Pagano Family but focuses more on the Mafia/underworld and I really liked that.
Trey chose his father’s cousin’s side, Nick who is Don, to follow in his footsteps which resulted in a distance between Trey and his father.
Trey does find a way back to his father thanks to his mother Bisby, Nick and Lara.
Susan Fanetti doesn’t write simple heroines or heroes. Lara is traumatized in her own way thanks to her mother who suffered from münchausen by proxy. Despite that she’s an intelligent and strong woman who knows how the dark Pagano world operates cause she works for The Don too but gets tangled up in their mess.
Trey and Lara works because of their differences. They complement each other. They make sense. Trey sees beauty in Lara despite her flaws and she finds safety in him. A family.
I could stay in the Pagano world forever thanks to Susan Fanetti. I’m so glad there’s at least one more book, so far, to tell. Donnie -The Face, and man have I been waiting for him.
4 Mulberry Leaf Stars
So, each time I read one of Susan’s novels, I think I’ve found my new favorite romance book couple to love; in the Pagano family series, first I loved Luca and Manny best, then John and Katrynn, then Joey and Tina, and Nick and Bev; I think I settled on the latter bc I just loved me some Nick. I was so excited about this series being a spin-off from the Pagano family saga because it would focus on the “dark” side of the family, the Mafiosos who worked under Nick. I LOVE Mafioso romance. But I was puzzled about why the series would start off with Trey, Carlos oldest son, I thought Donnie (Face) would be a much more interesting character.
Well, once again, I’m proven wrong – this book is SUPERB!!!!! This is one of those books where the prose is so beautifully written that you don’t want to read the book fast, you try to read it as slowly as possible just to savor it. When I love a book, I “talk” back to the book by writing lots of notes while I’m reading it, and I wrote A LOT of notes for this book.
Susan excels at writing characters who suffer from mental illness/emotional disorders, but she picks disorders that most people probably are unfamiliar with (Manny had reactive attachment disorder) or she has characters with more familiar problems (Joey’s PTSD) but she paints a really full picture of what it’s like to live with the disorder from the perspective of the person living with the disorder but also how it affects the family of the loved one with the disorder. I am a mental health professional and I don’t think there is a writer in any genre who captures the lived experience of persons suffering from mental health challenges and how it affects families better than Susan.
In the case of this book, the person with the challenges is Lara Dumas. Lara suffers from debilitating OCD and probably PTSD; her mom had Munchausen’s by Proxy and really wreaked havoc on Lara’s ability to trust, particularly to trust women. She is also brilliant and works for Nick decoding encrypted messages. In the beginning of the book, she is brutally attacked and Nick assigns Trey with the task of taking her away and keeping her safe until the threat is taken care of. Their time away in a cabin in West Virginia is the beginning of the slow process of them taking the risk to fall in love; they actually fall in love pretty quickly but it takes a while for them to get to the point where they can express this to each other.
What’s to love about this book; where to begin? As I said earlier, the prose is exquisite. Then, there’s the way that Trey just accepts and loves Lara for who she is, and that’s quite a challenge because while she is a powerhouse intellectually, she has lost a lot of ground in her emotional development because of what she went thru with her mother. When you read about how Lara experiences the world, you feel like you’re inside her skin, you’re inside her mind, so you experience the world the way that she does; this is such a rare gift and Susan captures this lived experience of persons with mental health challenges with a level of detail and respect for the person with the challenges in ways that are unparallel; she is not asking you to pity the person but to have compassion for them. They’re not crazy, they’re different. The men in the Pagano have one trait in common: they love their women, challenges and all. They don’t ask them to change, they love them for who they are, not in spite of who they are. The women are also not what you would typically call beautiful; in Lara’s case, she has such a distrust of food because her mother poisoned her so much as a child that she is woefully thin, and yet Trey sees her beauty inside her frail body. Watching them engage in the “dance of love” is so sweet!!!!! The other subplot, which is very important is watching Trey come to terms with whom he is and watching how this affects his relationship with his father and with Nick. The metaphor of how the Paganos go to Mass each Sunday but sit on opposite sides of the church is a powerful metaphor of the ties that both strain and bind the family together.
I could on and on about this tender love story, but I will end by saying this is one of the best books I’ve read in 2018, Trey and Lara are almost my favorite couple of all time for Susan’s books but my heart still belongs to Isaac and Lillie in the South Bend series. I can’t wait until I read Donnie’s story (YES!!!!)
Completely adored being back in the Pagano world. Trey’s story was everything I wanted!
Delving into darkness, taking risks with her characters never detracts from Fanetti’s realness with those characters but instead enhances readers connection to them and to her writing. As always and especially in Simple Faith there is no light without dark, no faith without certainty. This author always delivers everything she has in terms of emotions as evidenced by her poised, beautiful writing presenting a much bigger picture reminding me, and hopefully all readers, of not only my faith in her writing but of my faith in love and all that surrounds me. Through Trey’s story, one in which I so very much anticipated, I garnered a deeper respect for him as a beloved character and a deeper respect for how much this author cherishes her characters. Another amazingly dazzling novel, Susan Fanetti.
A phenomenal beginning to a new series. I cannot wait to get my hands on more! <3