Title: ⟫ Il Padrone
Author: ⟫ Leigh Kenzie
Rating: ⟫ 3.5/5
Blurb: ⟫
Allesandro
I’m Il Padrone, the Master of this Family, and Emilio will learn his place. I’ll bathe in his tears and watch as he humiliates himself. It’s all for my pleasure. I own it all and he’s just another addition to my collection.
Emilio
Il Padrone calls me his toy. His property. He says I can earn the right to be higher in his organization if only I submit. If only I change who I am. I may be younger, but he hasn’t seen the likes of me before.
Just how twisted can a tale of vengeance become?
Trigger Warnings: This is a dark MM Mafia with graphic violence and extreme sexual situations. Please see inside for more information.
The Vendetta Series also contains MMM and MMM+ scenes. While the series becomes dark romance, it does not begin that way.
Book 1 of the Vendetta Series, ends on a cliffhanger
*This has been re-edited as of July 2022 but no new content has been added
Review: ⟫ Firstly, I would say to heed the warnings within the book and the author’s website – this is very dark, with talk of torture, abuse and sexual domination. Secondly, I wasn’t surprised that this was the author’s first book – I felt that that came through in the writing as there was a lot of telling rather than showing. Also, there were occasions when the writing came through as choppy and disjointed, and not when I would have expected it to be like during the torture sessions.
Few of the characters are fully fleshed out but it shows more with the two ‘main’ characters, Emilio and Alessandro. They were almost cut-outs of what you would expect: dark, mafia boss with twisted sexual desires, disconnected from the world and everyone within it and showing a complete disregard to life; intelligent, college boy who has remained a virgin and finds himself in an impossible situation whereby the most he expects is to survive, and any enjoyment he gains is a shock to him.
It became clear that this is the first in a series of books that will presumably dig deeper into the backgrounds of the characters, but unfortunately for me the story didn’t grab me enough to make me want to read any further. And that wasn’t because I found the book too dark – it was plain and simply lack of interest. I didn’t feel anything for any of the characters. Their motivations and actions made no sense to me and I didn’t care what happened to them, which in the case of Emilio is absolutely essential to be able to carry on.
The writing itself was solid if a tad simplistic and I would imagine that for some people, it would be a joy to discover that there are at least six more books in the Vendetta series. I’m not one of those people and I doubt I will be looking further into the series.
I received an ARC from GRR.
