Genre/Trope: Arranged Marriage/Mafia Romance
The first time she saw Santino she was twelve and he was already a man. He looks like Michelangelo's David he is so perfect. Her parents were murdered when she was five and she had to leave Italy to come live with her aunt and uncle in the States.
As she and her friend Scarlett are studying, a paper airplane lands on her open page with some frat boys following the planes flight. One says she can keep it if she wants. When she pushes plane his way he looks at her friend to make the same offer, but luckily the librarian has arrived.
Violetta and Scarlett have already made plans for their school break to Santorini and Malta. She is determined that on this trip to Greece she will find the perfect man who can take her virginity, but that she can leave behind and come back to finish her nursing degree.
She is awoken and told her Zia needs her in the kitchen. All the family is arriving in preparation for a special guest. What is going on here? Everyone stopped what they were doing when she arrives in the kitchen and no one will answer any of her questions about who they are expecting for dinner and then her uncle tries to get her to leave the kitchen to study.
Violetta looks on in amazement as her aunt and uncle fight over her helping in the kitchen. They never fight. And this is after seeing him on his knees in front of Santino a few days ago in tears.
But, she doesn't have long to wait. As the food is getting ready to be served their guest arrives. Santino DiLustro walks through the door and he is calling in a marker for a debt to be paid. And she is the payment.
There will be no trip to Greece with her best friend. She is to be married to the Mafia King tomorrow. She is a prisoner of a man too beautiful to gaze upon but too evil to comprehend.
This is the first book in The DiLustro Arrangement trilogy. I absolutely loved this book! It is very well written and the characters are fully developed and very relatable.
Violetta is in college going for her nursing degree when she finds out that her life has been a lie. Everything she believed to be true was false and her aunt and uncle kept it from her. You can feel Violetta's rage and fear through the pages. Not only about her new circumstances, but her fear that she is falling in love with a man she had no choice but to marry.
I love Santino. He may be the mafia king and feared, but he is obsessed with Violetta and is determined that she guides their relationship. He won't take anything that she doesn't freely offer - no what she begs to have.
This book is action packed from cover to cover. We are given leads about Violetta's father, but not enough information to understand what is so important about Violetta. And the cliffhanger was not one that I had expected and only added more to the mystery.
Although this book has dual POV, it is more Violetta's story than Santino's and he doesn't get as much time speaking to us. Hopefully, book 2 will give us more from his perspective as I feel that the past has the answers.
There is one line in this book spoken by Santino that just killed me and I think that was when Violetta knew that she was in love with the man who hadn't given her a choice in marriage.
I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading the rest of Violetta and Santino's story.
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