“She can enjoy her ugly, imperfect world a little longer. Soon enough, everything about her will be mine.”
This man is everything your mom warned you about.
Ruthless
Cold
I should be afraid of him.
I should keep my distance.
But talk about sexy – he’s a living, breathing, chiseled god.
At a glance, he could have any woman in the room..
When l meet his eyes for the first time, I know what’s … time, I know what’s behind them.
These were dark, angry, and full of demons.
Who cares if his past has damned him?
Who cares if his eyes say he could never love?
I need the money.
Simple as that.
I’ll suffer in silence, let him pierce my heart till I bleed out knowing he’ll never feel the same way.
Could he?
more
DNF
I only made it 3 chapters.
If you are going to write about something you know nothing about, especially a heavy topic like addiction make sure you are writing facts.
This book that begins with the heroine having a best friend as an addict.
While I’m not an addict I have family members on both sides that are. In only a few sentences it was clear this author didn’t even make an effort to try and give a factual representation of this heartbreaking disease.
“Relapsing didn’t mean Sylvie was bad, just that she was weak”
This is so far from the truth.
There are a large majority of addicts in recovery that WILL relapse at least once, but that doesn’t mean they are weak.
“True she kicked the habit, but it never truly went away”
The fact is that once you are an addict, you will always be an addict. It doesn’t matter if you have been in recovery for 20+ years, you are and always will be a “recovering addict”.
I “might” have been able to overlook those things because for all I know Sylvie was only in those beginning chapters and then not mentioned throughout the rest of the book.
In Chapter 2 “Both our parents died when we were young, and Sylvie and I met in a group home when we were teenagers.”
“Now, both of us were twenty-eight….”
Chapter 3
“Five years of friendship, extremely close friendship, was just…..gone.”
Those were things that simply couldn’t be over looked. If the author couldn’t be sure to keep these seemingly small things straight in the very first chapters than I had no reason to believe that this story was worth continuing.
For those of you who love a romance with a twist, the first book in this box set, The Syndicate, may work for you. I’ve only read “Theo” so far, but I have strong feelings in a positive and negative bent. I gave 4 stars for the content of the story, because both the ‘H’ and the ‘h’ are not the normal kind of people you regularly meet in romance books, especially in a mafia book where the Don is concerned about getting the hottest chick around. If Ilya and Theo are hot at anything, it’s in accepting each other the way they are. Well, Theo’s better at that than Ilya. She was deformed by an accident in her childhood, and Theo craves her company, body and love regardless. See, that’s what I love about this story! It has great bones!
However, the title of the book should have been Ilya, because she is the protagonist, and Theo is secondary to her. This is Ilya’s story of discovering herself. The other 4 books in the set are about brothers, so maybe the author, Raven Scott was pressured to change the title, but it was a bad decision. In addition, as other reviewers have said, the story is really hard to follow.
Wow! I’m a retired middle school English teacher trained to follow convoluted writing patterns, and the grammar, syntax and punctuation were difficult even for me! I don’t know how a regular reader would get by. Even though every chapter identifies whose point of view will be speaking, the author doesn’t use any dialogue clues. ‘He said, she cried, they replied’ are not used, so the reader becomes confused as to which character is speaking at any given paragraph. Serious editing needs to be done for Raven Scott to ever receive 5 from me.
I enjoyed this book. Both Theo and Ilya are both guarded, didn’t trust easily, and have both emotional and physical scars. Theo was cold and seemed unfeeling to Ilya and didn’t want anything to do with Theo. At their first meeting Ilya knew that Theo would be questioning her regarding her roommate who she just kicked out. She didn’t know where she is but Theo was given a deadline to find Ilya’s ex-roommate, Sylvie, by the end of the day. Theo took Ilya with him to find Sylvie. During looking for Sylvie Theo experiences pain from his hand which was injured in Iraq and made Ilya feel for him. She tried to resist having any feelings for Theo. Theo (the book) is the first in the Vindicate Series so it had more explanations and details to “set up” the background story that I am guessing with be throughout the series. I won’t go into any more details as I don’t want to spoil it for you. To find out what happens you will have to read Theo. If you like Mafia romances then this book is for you. Hope you enjoy the book as much as I do.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
This story just Pull you into the unknown, you don’t know what to expect. When I thought I figured it out the mystery surrounding Theo, Ilya, Carlyle, Mateo, Oran, George I’m not even close.. In addition, I can’t stop reading because this story is so intense, weird, complex, addictive why stop now? I recommend this first book of A Dark Mafia Romance Theo by Raven Scott
A mafia story with a heroine that has not been able to catch a break in life or knows what ‘easy’ means. This is Illya and Theo’s story. Illya is a dancer at a club with her roommate Sylvie. Sylvie has gotten back into drugs so Illya kicks her out. She is dancing in the VIP room for a group of men. As they pay no attention to her, they talk business, and an order of business Illya finds that she has no place over hearing. I enjoyed reading this book and found it to be very entertaining, I look forward to more of this mafia. Enjoy!
This is the 1st on a new series and is Theo and Illya’s story. Illya has had a rough life after losing her family in a fire which left her physically and mentally scarred, and she is sent to live with her uncle, but unfortunately her aunt spent all of her inheritance, leaving nothing. Illya is forced to live on the street and in women’s shelters, where she meets Sylvie. These two stays together for years until Sylvie slips up with her addiction and Illya kicks her out. Forced to work extra hours at a strip club to pay her bills, she meets Theo who is the bodyguard for Matteo who is looking for Sylvie as she was pregnant with his baby. This is a well written story which is a dark mafia romance story with an intricate plot and engaging characters. I look forward to reading more from this author whose work I recommend.
Ilya is a dancer and when she finds out her room mate is back to using drugs again she tosses her out no second chances. When she’s at work the men in the room she’s dancing in are talking about her former room mate and are trying to locate her. Theo is in the room watching her dance. When he learns that she is the room mate to Sylvia he uses her to find Sylvia. The more time they are together the closer Theo and Ilya grow and soon he doesn’t want to see her in any pain or trouble. What will happen when Theo doesn’t turn Ilya over to Matteo? Can they be together?
This is a great story that will hook you in from beginning to end. The chemistry between them is blazing hot. This is a well written and very entertaining story. I would recommend this book to any book lover.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
An enjoyable complex dark somewhat mafia romance that ends on a cliffhanger leaving me wondering. This engaging storyline Is evenly paced with suspense, drama, passion, and solace. The characters are well developed, both broken in their own way and have undeniable passion and connection. I voluntarily read and reviewed this ARC.
I received the ARC from Bad Boy Update. Illya and Theo have their own dark pasts and scars they carry, both on the outside and inside. They are an unlikely match, but once Theo sees her he can’t get her out of his mind. Although the chemistry is there, trust is another matter. Their story is a dark, at times painful but it makes you want keep reading to see what happens.
Warriors in Life and Love
Sometimes life seems like a constant battle to merely survive. For Illya, life doesn’t just seem like a battle, it is. Badly burned as a child in a fire that killed her family and that left her emotionally and physically scarred, she has never given up fighting to climb out of the hole that life dug for her. Now at 28, hiding her scars, both external and internal, she unwittingly gets thrown into another one of life’s battles when her apartment mate, Sylvie, a “recovering” heroin addict who falsely hid her ongoing addiction, gets involved with a mafia boss’ youngest son, Mateo. But when Sylvie disappears after telling him that she is pregnant with his child, Mateo sets his bodyguard, Theo, a wounded warrior who also bears physical and emotional scars, on the hunt. In seeking Sylvie, Theo finds Illya, a woman who does her best to hide her scars, her pain and her story under a body leotard, working her magic of listening and observation in a San Diego strip club where she guards her every earned dollar in her hope of escaping her current situation and to follow her dreams and talents with languages.
Illya and Theo are drawn together in adversity, but soon are drawn sexually and emotionally as the two damaged souls find solace together, offering the opportunity for a fragile love to begin to emerge. But life is not done with the challenges for the two. Carlyle, the elder brother of Mateo, soon followed by their father George and younger brother Oran insert themselves into Mateo’s world, and by association drawing Illya and Theo into their darker dealings.
Raven Scott’s dark world of the mafia, weaves emotional threads of love, fear and hate in telling the story of two souls sucked into the twisted world. The story Theo and Illya is not fully resolved in this volume. While the two have found their solace together, they are still caught in the web family disfunctuality of their own families and also in the powerful mafia family that has drawn them into its web.
I received this novel as an ARC, but read it using my Kindle Unlimited account. I will continue to follow the story of Theo and Illya with Kindle Unlimited.
This book jumped around way too much, the character’s behavior was all over the place, and eventually you just get bored with the whole thing. The cadence in the way the characters talked was odd, so hard to relate too. Theo and Illya were not particularly relatable or likable most of the time. And what was up with that weird cliff hanger? So, why a 2 rating you ask. The cover was hot and you can read it for FREE with KU.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.