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King of Wrath by Ana Huang
Series: Kings of Sin #1
Publication date: October 20th, 2022
Pages: 398
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Synopsis:
She's the wife he never wanted... and the weakness he never saw coming.
Ruthless. Meticulous. Arrogant.
Dante Russo thrives on control, both personally and professionally.
The billionaire CEO never planned to marry--until the threat of blackmail forces him into an engagement with a woman he barely knows.
Vivian Lau, jewelry heiress and daughter of his newest enemy.
It doesn't matter how beautiful or charming she is. He'll do everything in his power to destroy the evidence and their betrothal.
There's only one problem: now that he has her... he can't bring himself to let her go.
***
Elegant. Ambitious. Well-mannered.
Vivian Lau is the perfect daughter and her family's ticket into the highest echelons of high society.
Marrying a blue-blooded Russo means opening doors that would otherwise remain closed to her new-money family.
While the rude, elusive Dante isn't her idea of a dream partner, she agrees to their arranged marriage out of duty.
Craving his touch was never part of the plan.
Neither was the worst thing she could possibly do: fall in love with her future husband.
King of Wrath is a steamy arranged marriage billionaire romance. It includes explicit content and profanity.
Recommended for mature readers only.
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Review:
When I was organizing my bookshelf I enlisted some help doing so. During the organization process we discovered that I had several books by Ana Huang in piles all over my room that needed to be rehomed on my shelf. It became a funny situation to state the author's name with exasperation at how many books I had of hers that needed to be wriggled into the shelf when I alphabetized. I decided to start decluttering my shelves by reading all my unread books and deciding whether they were keepers or ones that I would donate to my local secondhand bookstore. My daughter had overheard the joking about my abundant Ana Huang collection and impishly grinned as she pulled this one off the shelf. Far be it for me to deny the desires of my 10 year old.
There is an undertone throughout the book that I didn't truly catch and understand until closer to the end: the way culture played a firm factor in how things unfolded. With a name like Vivian Lau I don't know what I didn't realize it to begin with but the fact she was impossibly submissive and subservient to her family should have tipped me off. I do believe the book touched on the importance of respecting elders to the point of sacrificing one's own wants and desires in the Chinese culture. It made Vivian's determination to please her parents all the more real when you realized it wasn't just her desperation to be their perfect daughter but the fear that if she didn't she could lose everyone she ever loved. I liked that the author used that but also had Dante's own upbringing shed a light on how differently one would see the interactions especially between Vivian and her father. It was a fascinating tidbit that explained a lot of the reasoning for the FMC's actions but also the struggle between differing cultures. What is the usual for one is outrageous to the other. The fact that was so subtle it was almost missed was a nice garnish to the already great book.
Dante's hot and cold antics with Vivian were the customary for control freaks who feel like they are losing control at every turn so have to snuff out the cause of it. It was infuriating to watch though. Vivian was so sweet and charismatic that it was hard to see Dante even able to be indifferent to her at all. In those moments I hated Dante but I never lost hope for her. Vivian cracked his shell bit by bit until we got to see the real man underneath. He was a lot more soft spoken and sweet than the armor he wore. That evolution followed a very believable ebb and flow even if it broke my heart to see Vivian constantly feeling like nobody truly loved her for who she was. That insecurity spoke to me and made my heart ache.
This would have definitely been a five star book for me if it weren't for Dante being a little... less feral than I would have liked him. Sure, he could throw around some dirty talk and growl once in a while, but I didn't feel that desperation pour off of him for Vivian. Which is completely valid. Not every male lead has to be borderline caveman. And Dante seriously tried to live up to my expectations, but he fell short a little. That is really all I can critique about the book and it was simply based on my own preferences.
This was a great start to what I expect to be a really good series of various couples in the same universe finding their happily ever afters. Even through all the pitfalls and obstacles along the way telling them to ignore their hearts completely.
