MischaS_'s Reviews > Sweet Temptation

After finishing Twisted Hearts, I was rather unsure if I want to read this book or continue with this whole series. (Well, not a series what is it even? Since we had two series and now a stand-alone.)
But then I thought that I sort of liked the little glimpses we got on Guilia and Cassio in the Camorra series, so, yeah, I decided to read it.

(Why do I have a feeling that it's pretty obvious what I'm going to say about this book since I started this review with this "Explanation"?)

Anyway, I really liked the first third. It was fun, and I thought "redemption"! Guilia was super fun, one of the best female characters in this whole... thing. She knew who she was; she had personality, hobbies (I'll get more to that later), personal style and opinion.
I enjoyed the push and pull between her and Cassio. It was interesting to see how they would make this work. Plus the situation (Cassio already having two kids) was so different from all the other books in the previous series. It was just the shiny new thing.
Don't get me wrong; I was annoyed by Cassio's behaviour but... at least was not as bland as for the rest of the book.

And the thing I need to say here is that I thought that I disliked Guilia's parents in Kiara's books but let me tell you now that I'm 100 % sure that I cannot stand them even a bit.

But then it started to drag. For multiple reasons.

And the biggest one was that I was not feeling Guilia and Cassio; I did not feel any chemistry between them. In the first third, maybe a bit but then for the rest of the book? No, nothing.
Plus he still kept thinking about her as a child and teen which was killing any chance for some chemistry. And every time he called her "honey"... I just could not, it felt so weird and not fitting.

For me, this is not Guilia's and Cassio's book. It's Guilia's and Cassio's children's book. Because this was a story about how Cassio got the perfect nanny for his kids. You see, she never really held a child before but same for one child crying the first time she held her and the second one acting a bit aggressively the next day she's Mary Poppins! She even got a previously untrained (and clearly neglected) dog to listen to her commands!
Anyway, I do not get what the huge deal was that Cassio needed a wife to care for his children. He just needed a better staff. Like, what sort of staff who cares for the kids was just so bad that they did not go shopping for six months to buy the children new clothes which fits them. (Well, actually only the two-year-old boy had small clothes, somehow the infant had appropriately sized clothes.) You don't need a wife to buy clothes for your children, just get a better staff!

So, Cassio. He's a major idiot. His obsessive and controlling behaviour was way too much. I secretly hoped that Guilia would set all the clothes he wanted her to wear on fire.
Everybody, including Cassio, kept saying how cruel Cassio is but the problem is that we did not really get to see it. Since there was almost no "mafia business" in this book we did not get to see Cassio in working mode and therefore it was just the talk, he certainly did not do the walk.
So, and now to the big plot-twist! (view spoiler)[ The whole Gaia thing and poor Cassio being all broken because he's just so evil and he's the reason his wife killed herself. I'm sorry, it was just so pitiful that I did not care at all. Gaia was probably made to be the villain in Cassio's story. But it was so over the top that it did not work.
Plus it very much felt like Cassio's perspective. All I have to say is that: There are always three sides to a story. Yours, Theirs and The Truth.
Maybe the whole issue comes from Gaia sleeping with her half-brother! Like, please don't? At least make it a step-brother if anything. So, because of this, it just felt so forced to make Gaia as bad as possible that it became a satire. It just got so much in a bad way that I stopped caring about the whole situation. (Minus the half-brother thing because no.) But I was more upset by how Cassio was treating the dog than anything to do with Gaia.
Plus the fact that the children are not Cassio's just screams another book in future. (hide spoiler)]

Now to Guilia's hobbies I mentioned earlier. She mentions liking Pilates but not once in the whole book she's seen exercising.
She loves to paint; she brought canvases with her. She sets up a studio and paints once. When she moves in, she mentions adding colour to the kids' rooms, and I expected her to have a bonding scene with the kids where they paint on the walls. Which would totally fit the story and her hobbies would be more than just a farce.

The book ends with a nine years time jump which disconnects the story and the characters. At the moment I found it boring and just dragging.

As for the rating, I'm going to leave it at three stars (rather weak) and only because I rated the Twisted Hearts two stars. And despite my problems with this book, Twisted Hearts was just way worse.