Review: The Mafia And His Angel Tainted Hearts #1 by Lylah James

                                                      

Print Length: 472 pages

Publisher: Jessica Hawkins (August 1, 2017)

From Goodreads.com: Alessio…

Cold. Ruthless. Killer. I am respected and feared by all.

I wasn’t put on this earth to love or be loved. I was put here to wipe out every last member of the damn Abandonato mafia, to pay them back for my mother’s death.

When I find a strange girl hiding, beaten, under my bed, I don’t let her live out of compassion. She’s a trinket, my plaything.

Ayla…

I thought Alessio was only one more man who wanted to use me, hurt me, and throw me away. I don’t know what it is to trust anymore. I can’t find my heart under the pain.

Alessio found it. He touched it, and brought it alive again.

But if he discovers just how dangerous I am to him…I’ll lose my life.

  

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My Rating: 2 stars out of 5

I'm a little torn on this one to be honest. On one hand, I liked the friendship between Maddie and Ayla and the way despite working in the house, they also had time to hang out and get to know each other. I also liked watching Alessio and Ayla slowly come around to one another. There were moments of genuine affection and friendship that I enjoyed seeing. 

On the flip side of that, the way Alessio treated her constantly going from hot to cold, or worse, doing things with her, making her feel things only to be seen in sexual positions with another woman made it really hard to like him. I understand he was broken, but so was Ayla and you never saw her taking it out on him. Heck, if I'm being honest given her past and everything she had endured, Ayla had MORE of a reason to be nasty towards Alessio and keep their interactions firmly in the sphere of employer/employee, but she didn't. She found herself wanting to help him, wanting to ease his pain for reasons I will never understand. 

Another thing I really couldn't wrap my head around is how am I meant to believe Alessio is this big, bad mafia boss intent on killing the entire bloodline of a man for killing his mother, and yet he doesn't realize said man's daughter is the one living in his house? Surely Ayla cannot be such a common name that he didn't recognize it even with the fake one last name that she gave him. 

As for the rest of the plot, I feel like there were parts that would have been edited out (some of the back and forth between Alessio and Ayla for example), that would have made this book flow better. I also (and I know this is going to sound terrible), but which the violence in this book would have at least been different. Here we have two big, bad mafia men Alessio and Alberto, and yet when it comes down to them torturing someone they both do the same exact thing (parts of the two scenes I would have sworn were copied and pasted they were that similar). If you're going to write mafia books, I expect violence, but I at least expect some variety in their techniques. 

One final thing I need to mention is that it does add on a cliff-hanger, and while I was a little surprised by the twist at the end, at this time, I am unsure as to whether or not I will be continuing on with this series.