Brutal Prince by Sophie Lark – A Book Review

Spoiler-Free Overview

Aida is the youngest child and only daughter of the Gallo family, the Italian mafia family in Chicago. Their long standing rivals, the Griffins, are the Irish mafia family. When the Griffins throw a massive birthday party for their youngest, the Gallo kids decide to crash the scene.

While at the party, Aida goes snooping around the Griffin estate, steals a family heirloom, and accidentally starts a fire and pisses off Callum, the eldest son. When he retaliates after realizing she stole his grandfather’s watch, the two spark a feud between the mafia families. Instead of war, their parents decide to join the families by arranging Aida and Callum’s marriage. The two hate each other, but have to learn to get along for everyone’s sake.

Liz’s Thoughts and Feelings

This book isn’t memorable. I finished it a day ago from writing this review, and I had to think about what it was about. In only a day, I’ve already forgotten.

The concept is a common but enjoyable one. Two mafia kids are set up in an arranged marriage to merge the families. But, as I keep finding with a lot of modern romances, there’s just not enough meat on the bones. The pacing is a nightmare. There are odd time jumps, and we skip over plot points that leaves the story feeling rushed and incomplete. 

For example, there’s a big event that impacts Aida and Callum and brings them together even more. It shows Callumn that Aida isn’t the ‘soft’ rich kid. In fact, she can take care of herself and even him, when she wants to. But after the action of this event, we jump two weeks! No conversations with their families about what happened. No time recovering, especially between the two of them. There’s all this opportunity to connect them emotionally, but it’s rolled right over.

I like that Aida was super spunky and full of sass. Her character was one of the redeeming aspects of this book. She’s not a simpering female main character, which is often the women in these mafia romances. She’s tough, smart, and can take care of herself. She takes risks and loves her family. 

But, It wasn’t enough to make me want to read the next in the series.

I don’t get the hype of this book. I could understand if the spice was good, but it’s pretty meh. The romance is bland. The characters are mostly basic and archetypal.