I hated those Vampire books so much I thought I would never touch another book by this author. Well... not only did I read this one -effectively breaking my word- but I also enjoyed it!
Don't get me wrong this was still very trashy. Don't look to hard to the so called "plot" because it falls apart rather easily. Like... this mobster is Bratva, doesn't trust in ANY of his underlings and yet for the longest time his only job is staying at his office all day long reading ledgers? or the demons don't come from hell, they come from another world/dimension. Okay. Care to explain?? no? ok. Maybe the previous book explained how they ended up in that book but I couldn't care less about that whimpy imbecil Sascha, I disliked him in Alexei's book (my LEAST favorite of the other ones) and I hated him here, the entitled little shit I will not sit down and read a whole book about him getting banged.
Ivan was so soooo damaged. He has so many issues but it kinda works. The things that are fixable, Nix - god bless this incubus- helps him start the process and the unfixable things, well, they work well with Nix. My favorite part of a dark/toxic romance is never when the toxic character gets magically "cured" and now he has common sense and his healthy and functional; it's when the author takes two toxic, damaged people and makes them work together like a puzzle fitting together. This was Ivan and Nix for me.
The best thing Ivan had going was his straightforwardness. This bitch was like, I never liked a man before but I do now. ok, no biggie let's bang him. And bang him he does, over and over xD He worries briefly about his image as a mobster because of how bigoted the people around him are but it's very brief and anyway, his persona as a mobster is paper thin. The whole mafia thing is very flimsy, as I said, the kind of flimsy that if you look at it too hard it crumbles.
Oh, but as a toxic controlling bitch myself I might add that sometimes I felt like Ivan was extremely, intentionally misunderstood by his siblings(? Alexei's "character arc" is so random he has the personality of wet paper, and Sascha is bitter because he was coddled too much but he also doesn't want to engage in the "family bussiness" so.. wtf bitch? make up your mind. If your dad was shit to the both of you can you imagine how he was like with his heir? Instead of talking with their sibling that has probably suffer as much if not more than you two what do this bitches do? Blame his brother for everything shitty that ever happened to them and give him the cold shoulder because he can't communicate in a way that is satisfactory to them. If I had siblings like them I would've shot them too.
Nix was the superior ML, really. He's so well adjusted and interesting that I had a hard time believing this author could pull a character like him off.
So, the romance was excelent. The very little plot here was utterly unnecesary so I can ignore how badly written that side of the book was.
Good for me that I gave this one a try after hating the other series so much.
Oh, I still hate Alexei and Jay very VERY very much :)))))))))))) but this book gave me a little bit of Wolfe and his unhinge worldview so, another good point I guess.