As the youngest member of the Ferraro family, Emmanuelle has watched each of her brothers find happiness in love while her own heart was shattered by a lover’s betrayal. For two years she’s stayed as far away from Valentino Saldi as possible—until she learns that he’s been shot during a hostile takeover of his family’s territory.
Emme’s first instinct is to call her brother Stefano for help, and soon the entire Ferraro clan arrives to bring Val back from the brink of death and protect the Saldis from further attack. With one choice Emme has re-exposed herself to Val’s intoxicating pull and dragged her family into the Saldis’ private war.
A deadly storm is brewing, and only time will tell who survives…
Thoughts: I’m not sure where to start with this one. When this series came out I was on the fence about it. While I liked the premise of it I was wasn’t sure if I was going to like the male characters as they seemed extra Alpha to me. More than in Feehan’s other books.
It took me a bit to get into but I eventually fell in love with this family. If you love big messy Italian families with lots of enemies and ghosts from the past then you will love this story.
The Ferraros and Saldi’s have been enemies for centuries. No one knows why the feud started, just that it did and that neither side trusts the other. Fast forward to today and much like the Montagues & Capulets or even the American version of the Hatfields and MacCoy’s, and you have the girl from one family falling for the boy from the other family.
Over the course of the first 5 books we were able to watch Emme and Val and see their relationship from her brother’s perspectives and as older brothers often do, not approve. However, they genuinely liked Val as he seemed very different from his Mafioso family. In the last book we saw Val do something that broke Emme’s heart and made her turn against him completely. We never knew what it was however that incident is talked about in this book.
None of the books in this series have been easy reads as Feehan takes on some topics or rather a topic that most people don’t want to talk about let alone read about in their romance books, that of human trafficking specifically sex trafficking. Taking down a human trafficking ring is the core of this book. It is what drives Val.
To be honest, I wasn’t really invested in Val and Emme, I knew they were going to be together, I was more interested in all of the side characters and what was going on with Emme’s mom (who if you’ve never read one of these books is a nut job). I’m hoping that we get Val’s cousin and right hand man’s story as well as the other Ferrarro cousins stories.
If you’re a fan of Feehan’s Leopard series (one of my all time favorites) then you will like this series. If you haven’t read the other books in this series I highly recommend it.
Grade B
