“No love is fully requited. No love is equal. No love is fair. There is always one side that loves more. And you better not be that side—because it suffers.” – 2/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: new homes, cigarettes, broken pictures, envelopes and stolen kisses.

They say your first kiss should be earned.

Mine was stolen by a devil in a masquerade mask under the black Chicago sky.

They say the vows you take on your wedding day are sacred.

Mine were broken before we left church.

They say your heart only beats for one man.

Mine split and bled for two rivals who fought for it until the bitter end.

I was promised to Angelo Bandini, the heir to one of the most powerful families in the Chicago Outfit.

Then taken by Senator Wolfe Keaton, who held my father’s sins over his head to force me into marriage.

They say that all great love stories have a happy ending.

I, Francesca Rossi, found myself erasing and rewriting mine until the very last chapter.

One kiss.
Two men.
Three lives.
Entwined together.

And somewhere between these two men, I had to find my forever.

This book was a lot.

I personally don’t mind intense books and intense romantic relationships, but in this particular case it didn’t work out well for me. Actually, there were a number of things here that didn’t work out for me. 

For starters, I didn’t really care about the characters or the romance. The guy was an arrogant, douchebag (and not in a cool way) and the girl was the typical, pure girl that melted every time the guy touched her even if he was treating her badly – also, she’s not an actual teenager, but she is constantly referred to as “teenage bride”?

I wasn’t bothered by the age gap between the main characters, but some of the things that bothered me were the crazy amount of sexism, double standards and drama in this book. And don’t even get me started on their communication… “Nemesis”? Cringe.

At the end of the day, this book felt like a pile of nothing. Not only because of the reasons I mentioned before, but there’s a lot of “hating each other” that feels continuous and unnecessary. There’s a lot of negativity in this book constantly, and I didn’t like that.

It’s perfectly fine if a book doesn’t have a deep story behind it, but it should be at least entertaining…. and this definitely wasn’t. With the crazy amount of romance books out there, I think you would find a better one elsewhere in my humble opinion!