Empire by Rachel Van Dyken Review

5 Smooches

Synopsis

I have lost everything.

My purpose

My love

My soul

Death knocks on my door, I want to answer, but every time I reach for the handle — the promise I made her brings me back.

So I breathe.

I live.

I hate.

And I allow the anger to boil beneath the surface of a perfectly indifferent facade. I am broken, I don’t want to be fixed.

But the Empire is crumbling and it’s my job to fix it.

My job to mend the pieces that were scattered over thirty years ago.

A trip to New York, only one chance to redeem a lost part of our mafia family.

The only issue is, the only way to fix it, is to do something I swore I’d never do again.

An arranged marriage.

Only this time,

I won’t fall.

Or so help me God, I will kill her myself.

My name is Sergio Abandonoto, you think you know my pain, my suffering, my anger, my hate?

You have no idea.

I am the mafia.

I am the darkness.

Blood in. No out.

Review

‘To make eye contact with Sergio Abandonato was to know both pain and beauty simultaneously.’

I am a reviewer not an author so I am struggling to put into words how wonderfully surprising Empire was. I will be honest and say that Empire has been sitting on my kindle for quite a while waiting to be read and yet I kept going in and reading other books. Why you ask . . . honestly I was scared.  I loved Andi and Sergio with my full heart and I was scared that there was not room left for me to love another girl being with him. Tainting what they had. I was upset that he could so quickly be remarrying even if it was forced. So I waited and now that I have finished I am kicking myself for not reading it sooner. This book and these characters are everything.

‘He was going to be my husband. And the sucky part. He would never actually be mine.’

Val is the antithesis of Andi. She is young, innocent, curvy, and startle at the sound of a gun. Though she is the daughter of Luca she knows nothing of the mafia life. And now for her protection she is to be married to the shell of what is left of Sergio. Just two months prior, Sergio buried his wife, his love and he makes it abundantly clear that he will never love another. Val and Sergio’s road together is full of tears, heartache and growth. She challenges him in a completely new way and made it impossible for the reader not to only fall in love with her but desperately hoping he would too.

‘In her arms, I wasn’t a widower. I wasn’t mafia. I wasn’t anything but a guy; she made me feel that way, like nothing else mattered. It was cheesy. It was beautiful. It was like breathing for the first time.’

While Empire is still full of the guns and blood that is expected in the series I honestly thought this book more than any other focuses on the characters and the building of their relationship. I was constantly in tears, for their struggle, for their loss, and for their love. The entire series has slowly over time become one of my absolute favorites with each book just getting better and better.

‘The house was massive. Two stories. With a fountain in the middle. Huge. Fairy tale huge. Hah, ironic, that I’d get part of the fairy tale, at least let there be a library or something. Since I’d married the beast, give me books.’

Empire was absolute perfection and I cannot think of one thing I would change. That is a lie, there is one tiny part at the every very end of the book I would change in a heartbeat . . . the part that says the next book, Enrage, won’t be out until summer 2017. I do not think I can wait that long for Dante’s story.

~miranda