Rating: 3.5 stars
Thank you to Boldwood Books and NetGalley for this ARC. This has not influenced my review in any way. This book is on sale now.
Eliza Hamilton (yup, that is her name; not sure if the author is a fan of the musical or if the name is a coincidence) is the heir apparent to the Death Council, a secret organisation full of hired killers. While her father is battling cancer, she is to lead in his place, but most of the other members of the Council are sexist old men (or their equally sexist sons), so she's fighting an uphill battle.
In addition to having to fight with the bullheaded Council Members, someone is sabotaging her missions and stealing her kills. She briefly suspects her stepbrother James (her father is married to his mother), but he so vehemently denies it and is so determined to kill whoever's doing it on her behalf that she quickly rules him out.
James has clearly been madly in love with Eliza for years. Since there are a bunch of references to things that happened in the first book in the series, and I don't know how much of their backstory was established there, the opening of the book was rather abrupt and confusing to me. Trying to impress her and make her notice him has made James compete professionally with Eliza for about as long, and it seems like Eliza's feelings towards him are finally changing.
As part of an underworld crime syndicate, it's not like Eliza has a lot of people she can trust. It becomes clear that Eliza isn't going to figure out who is targeting her by herself, and James is fiercely protective of her and insists on using all of his computer skills to help her track down whoever is plotting against her.
The plot summary for this book makes it seem like a rather different story from what we actually get. It makes it seem like there isn't already a very potent attraction between Eliza and James, and that the rivalry between them is a lot more hostile than the playful one-upmanship they have clearly been engaged in for several years. It makes it seem as if they are forced to work together, which is also not the case. Eliza doesn't want to confide in her father, who is ill. Her elder sister isn't in the family business (nevertheless, they have a lovely and very supportive relationship), and she feels too protective of her younger brother to want to involve him. So James is pretty much the only person she can turn to for help, and he would cut his own throat before he in any way betrayed her.
For the first 15% or so, I wasn't sure if I was going to keep reading. I genuinely don't know if the weird opening chapters would have made more sense if I'd read the first book, but in a series like this, the stories need to be able to be read in any order and make sense to the reader, even if they've not started at the beginning. It probably doesn't help that I was expecting a slightly different story, based on the plot description.
The book is in dual POVs, with some chapters from Eliza's POV and some from James. At first, I didn't like Eliza at all; she seemed abrasive and too arrogant for me, but thankfully the chapters from James were easier to read, and before I knew it, I wanted to keep reading just to see how the story played out.
Just in case it wasn't obvious from the review so far, this book is a dark romance, with protagonists who are extremely skilled at doing very bad things to people, and seem to get off on it too. It is explained that the Hamiltons (and James, who is married into the family) only take contracts on really despicable people; they don't just off anyone for money, but they still literally murder people for a living, and both James and Eliza torture several people over the course of the book to get answers when they are trying to figure out who is trying to sabotage Eliza. So if you don't like graphic violence mixed in with your romance, this is probably not the book for you.
Not sure if I want to read more from this author or not. Once I got past the clunky beginning, it was a quick read. I just don't know if I'm interested in reading about the other two Hamilton siblings.
No comments:
Post a Comment