Review: Malice by Coralee June

Malice by Coralee June

Series: Malice Mafia #1

Publication date: May 6th, 2021

Pages: 413

Spice Rating: 🔥🔥

Synopsis:

There are three rules for being best friends with a mafia princess:

1. Don't ask any personal questions.

2. Don't show up at her house unannounced.

3. Don't ever, ever let anyone know you're friends.

For three years, I followed the rules. Vicky and I met once a week at the diner where I worked. I was her slice of normalcy, she was the one person I could confide in. It might have been unconventional, but it worked for us.

One night, all hell broke loose and I got caught up in a battle of bloodshed where we almost lost our lives. I ended up face to face with Vicky's dangerous older brothers. Anthony, William, and Nicholas Civella--the made men of the Kansas City Mob.

After fighting for my life and proving myself worthy, they brought me into their deadly world. It was glamorous but twisted. Torture, death, and crime followed me everywhere I went, chiseling away at parts of me until I wasn't the same anymore.

Slowly, I betrayed my best friend, and fell in love.

Chances are they'll ruin me. This thing between us has deadly consequences. But in this criminal world, I'm learning that the rules don't apply when you're the boss.

**This book is a dark reverse harem romance and contains material that is intended for readers 18+. This book contains graphic sex scenes and violence. Please read with caution.**

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Review:

Juliet had a normal life working at a diner with a best friend she saw on a semi-regular basis and a grandmother she loved to death. But her best friend of three years had secrets and while Juliet was fine letting her keep her secrets until her best friend's mob boss brother shows up at the diner she works at and calls Juliet out as a rat. Faced with the prospect of being tortured and killed by Nicholas Civella Juliet must harness her inner psychopath. Once Nick realizes Juliet has nothing to do with his organization outside of befriending his sister, he and his two other brothers start integrating her into their family. She is to be the fly on the wall that they need to sniff out their actual rat. Meanwhile she gets to know the brothers and how damaged each of them are.

Anthony was captured, tortured, and assaulted to the point where he is more comfortable with the dead than the living. He is a special kind of psychopath but she finds a kindred spirit within him. He was a sweet and beautiful soul inside a killer's body.

William has been listening and learning about her for the past three years as her best friend's bodyguard. He has an obsession with Juliet that borders on a tragic poem. He is romantic and willing to do anything for Juliet that she asked. But he has a hard time standing up to her older brother. In his words, Nick is the heir, William is the spare, and he lives his life exactly like that.

Nick is cruel, quick to anger, and psychotic in the worst way. He has the ability to shut himself off from his feelings. He is the least redeemable of the three men in my opinion. He is domineering and controlling to the point of being a monster.

I feel if the book had been written with a bit less of Nick and a bit more of Anthony or William it would have been a highly regarded book for me. Nick wasn't just domineering and controlling, he was abusive. His tantrums reminded me that of a child. He's so willing to burn everything down to get what he wants without any thought to the consequences of his actions. He was what spoiled the book for me. Juliet is a psycho disguised as a nice girl. There is a darkness in her I kept waiting to see come out completely but it just trickled out around the seams and never fully developed. I hope that in the next books she is a bit more fleshed out. 

And as always, I always have at least one favorite in a harem. Anthony is it. I found him so delightfully quirky that, much like Juliet, I was able to overlook his clear mental issues. But I know that those issues aren't so quickly fixed. 

All in all, the book was middle of the road for me. It would have rated higher if there was even an ounce of humanity to Nick's character.