Rating: 3 Stars

Publisher: Cora Rose

Genre: Gay Romance – kind of

Tags: Contemporary, Age Gap, Bi Character (Skylar), Bondage/Spanking, Mob/Mafia, Opposites Attract, Romance, Series

TW from the author – ‘This story does contain violence and sexual acts between main characters with dubious consent (dub-con) and/or consensual non-consent (CNC).’

Length: 238 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

After my honorable discharge from the Marine Corps, it only made sense to put my skills to good use as a personal bodyguard. The contracts keep me moving and traveling, and the money is good. All I’ve ever wanted was to make sure my mother and sister were taken care of after my father passed away. So when Anthony Costello, the notorious mob boss and my dad’s ex-employer, asked me to take on a special job for his family, I couldn’t say no.
But not even my six-year stint as an elite Marine could have prepared me for the hellscape that is being trapped in a secluded safe house with his son. Diablo Costello is a rude little chaos gremlin that lives to push all my buttons. I can’t keep him safe if he’s determined to fight me every step of the way. But I can see through the bratty facade. I know what Diablo needs. What he longs for. And God help me, I’m going to give it to him.

This book is a little different than my other books due to the characters involved. Please check the content warning in the beginning of the book!

Review –

Additional TW from Cindi – There’s also other violence, with some on page and some not. The violence that’s not on page is described well enough to know exactly what’s happening. Diablo has an obsession with cutting/saws. He’s also the son of a crime boss who takes pleasure is using knives as a form of torture. There’s enough in the book that additional twigger warnings should be noted. 

“Aren’t you supposed to make sure I’m comfortable?”

“Your father specifically requested I make you as uncomfortable as possible.”

Diablo is a psychopath. If you were to look up the definition of psychopath, it describes him perfectly. He’s also a major brat, though calling him that is an insult to all the other brats in the world. If you think that brattiness goes away in this book, even for a moment, you’d be wrong.

The psychopath thing surprises me, yet it doesn’t. The reason it does is because it’s in the Unexpected series, where all the books that I’ve read so far – except Colin – are your typical (ish) new adult type books with a bit of romance, a ‘big misunderstanding’ or two, and a hell of a lot of sex. There was absolutely nothing in any of them that even hints at anything violent, unless you count blowing up things and shooting at targets out in the middle of nowhere. The reason it doesn’t in Diablo is because of who Diablo is.

Which is why I’m publishing my review here and not just on Goodreads where I’ve published my other reviews of the series except for Colin that I read a couple of years ago. Diablo’s story belongs in the Unexpectedly Twisted series, not this one. He’s Anthony Costello’s son and Angel’s brother from The Silencer. I wanted to know where Diablo came from before continuing on to the second book in that series, which is Angel’s. I was frustrated because I thought I’d missed something by not reading Diablo’s story before his dad’s. I’m really glad I didn’t now because I was able to see Anthony before he and Tatum got together, and I was able to understand him a lot more. Had I read Diablo first, I likely wouldn’t have continued on with that family because it was just too… out there, and Diablo is probably the biggest brat I’ve ever seen in a book. I wouldn’t have lasted one chapter before doing a DNF.

Diablo, almost twenty, is an immature wild child. Of Anthony Costello’s fraternal twin sons, he’s the one most like their father when it comes to violence. He relishes in it whereas his twin doesn’t. Angelo (aka Angel) is sweet, innocent. Diablo is anything but. He brags about cutting up bodies, and has a serious obsession with cordless saws. Apparently, Diablo went after somebody who had hurt Angel, and now he needs protection because the guy is out for blood.

Angel is what I usually call him because that’s what he is. A certified angel straight from heaven, and I’m the brat straight from hell.

I have an annoying habit of causing chaos and reaping the consequences. It’s just how I was made. Whereas Angel is the peacemaker, I revel in the mess, the conflict. I like to push people’s buttons. All of them. Simultaneously.

There wasn’t enough info on what the guy did, in my opinion. Maybe it was mentioned in Lex, that I haven’t read yet. I knew enough to understand how serious it was. I do know that Diablo’s father was furious about what Diablo did. He should’ve handled the situation, not his son.

Skylar, thirty, is Diablo’s bodyguard. They’re in hiding until Anthony can find the bad guy and deal with him. Before they even make it to the first safe house, Diablo’s a bratty nightmare. He was more like nineteen going on nine by the way he acted. Strike that. I know nine-year-olds who are more mature than him.

He.

Never.

Stopped.

It didn’t matter what was happening, he fought Skylar every single step of the way. A couple of chapters in, I was kind of hoping the bad guy would find him just to shut him up already.

Okay, not really, but he was seriously that bad.

He couldn’t open his mouth without being a brat. He was constantly calling Skylar ‘the help’ while disrespecting him at every turn. On top of that, he couldn’t go five minutes without making a mess and leaving it for Skylar to clean up. He refused to do anything for himself, and didn’t seem to be overly bothered over some dangerous guy having a hit out on him. I get that the author was trying to show that he’s only that way because he’s guarding his heart, and because Anthony has constantly told him not get close to anybody. I knew that, but it didn’t make Diablo any better in my eyes.

Everything I know, I learned from observation or research.
Unless you count how to dismember someone. That I learned firsthand. That I learned from my father step-by-step and with practice.

Yes, right there. Slice there.

~~~

My father’s a hard man, rarely showing affection. And when he does, it’s usually in the form of killing someone.

Come and slit his throat, Diablo. Show him whose son you are.
That’s my boy.

Then we get to Skylar. Skylar was the bodyguard for the son of the very dangerous mob boss Anthony Costello, who got ‘the silencer’ nickname because of how he made sure the ‘victims’ could never speak again. Even knowing that Anthony could have Skylar tortured and killed without breaking a sweat, Skylar still decided to hook up with the man’s son. And to be a bodyguard, the only real bodyguarding he did was either in the bedroom or when he was trying to keep Diablo contained. By that, I mean literally tied up. Granted, Diablo made it difficult for him to do much of anything other than babysit the brat who had something bad to say every single time he opened his mouth. I could understand Diablo being guarded, for not showing any emotion. His father didn’t do hugs or really show any kind of outward affection, so he made Diablo the way he is. He also never held Diablo accountable, which is why he made it his mission to make Skylar’s job as his bodyguard a living hell.

Everything changes when the bad guy finds them, and Skylar gets hurt. This is the only time, outside of his talks with Angel, that I saw Diablo act even remotely human. There still wasn’t a lot of emotion other than anger because Skylar was injured, but the reader could see how much it really affected him.

This is by no means a typical romance, but it is a romance, though even calling it that is a stretch.

Anthony is the only reason I’m not rating the book much lower, and I’m not really sure what that says about me considering he’s a ruthless killer. Had I rated it based on Diablo and Skylar and their relationship, it would’ve been a solid 2 stars. Their relationship went beyond warped. I now know Anthony’s story, and I liked seeing him in this book. There’s even a chapter in his POV. He’s dark, he’s violent, and he’s by no means a nice guy. Even so, I really liked him in The Silencer and in this one. He shows emotions he’d never shown before with Diablo, and he even does with Skylar, who he could’ve easily had killed for getting naked with his son instead of strictly guarding him. It was almost like his cold, dark heart was staring to thaw a bit.

Overall, this book is okay. I seriously could not stand Diablo and his constant bratty ways. I like Skylar well enough, but there wasn’t much of a backstory for him. I feel like he gave in much too easily when it came to certain things, mainly sex. And these guys do not do sweet and loving sex. There’s a lot of tying up and spanking going on. Trust me when I say that Diablo deserved every single strike from Skylar’s hand and even a wooden spoon. I do, however, feel that a permanent gag would have been a nice addition to the rope and spoon. 😉

Now that I’ve read this, I can finally read Angel’s story, His Prince. I’ve kind of fallen down a rabbit hole with this author over the past week or so as I tried to read about characters from one series who are also in another series.

I’ll, at some point, finish the Unexpected series, though I’m iffy about Luke and Lex. I’m not a fan of either character, so I skipped their books for now. I’ve read six books by this author in a week, including a Colin reread. I’ll be walking away for a few days and then I’ll come back to Angel’s book.

One thing that frustrated me about this one is not knowing how the bad guy found their safe house when nobody was supposed to know about it except them and Anthony. If it was explained, I missed it. But then again, I was long ready to end the book at that point.