Rating: 1.5 | Book-Endz

TITLE: ⟫ Broken Bond
AUTHOR: ⟫ J.L. Cross

SERIES: ⟫ Claimed in Blood Book #1
RATING: ⟫ 1.5/5

BLURB: ⟫ I was rejected at the altar. Now the most dangerous mafia heir in the city claims I’m his.

Julian Vescari was supposed to vanish after being cast aside—Hollow, ruined, unworthy of love. Instead, fate delivers him into the arms of Enzo Romano, the brutal heir to the Romano crime family.

Enzo Romano doesn’t ask. He takes. He burns cities for loyalty, carves fear into his enemies, and when he learns Julian carries his heir, nothing will stop him from keeping what he claims. Not rival families. Not blood feuds. Not Julian’s desperate fear of chains disguised as devotion.

But in a world built on power, survival, and whispered betrayals, being bound to Enzo is both protection and prison. The dockside runs red with Veyra blood, secrets crawl in the marble halls of the Romano mansion, and Julian must decide. Is he Hollow still? Or is he strong enough to stand beside the wolf who claimed him?

🔥 Broken Bond is a dark, high-heat MM mafia omegaverse romance featuring:

A rejected mate turned reluctant heir-bearer
A ruthless mafia alpha who kills for devotion as much as power
Mpreg, protective possessiveness, family intrigue, and found strength in fire
Themes of survival, blood oaths, and a bond forged where enemies circle

For readers who love dark omegaverse, mafia dynasties, and broken omegas who rise fiercer than fate—this book will leave you breathless.

One Hollow.
One heir.
One bond that could burn a city to the ground.

👉 Start reading Broken Bond today and discover the dark omegaverse romance everyone’s talking about.

Content Warning: Broken Bond is a dark MM mafia romance featuring violence, abduction, explicit intimacy, power imbalance, and mpreg. This story includes mature themes and is intended for 18+ adult readers only.

REVIEW: ⟫ The premise grabbed me and I was ready for darkness, alphas and omegas and a mafia background. Unfortunately, this book didn’t live up to my expectations – I think I understand what they were trying to achieve with the style of writing – very spare and stark, although descriptive. Unfortunately, somewhere amidst all of that, the actual meat of the story got lost. Or maybe there just wasn’t any – everything was very surface, including the relationship between Julian and Enzo.

Having finished reading it, I still couldn’t tell if they even cared about each other, let alone found love. To a large extent, Julian being an omega didn’t even figure in the story – the fact that he was jilted at the altar meant that he was called a number of derogatory names and cast out, no longer fit for society, but there was no real explanation as to why. I just found myself with more questions than answers by the time I had finished reading, but I wasn’t interested enough to hope that the second book in the series might hold some answers. I can’t see me reading more by this author which is a shame because I really did love the idea.

Title: ⟫ The Face of the Wicked

Author: ⟫ J.K. Jones

Blurb: ⟫ Yuli knows a predator when he sees one.

A wide smile, pink lips pulled over rabid teeth.

Ren Hirokazu. A trained assassin who answers to no one.

His stare cripples him. His rough voice unravels him.

Yuli craves exactly what he shouldn’t.

Not a human. An Android.

A criminal. A murderer. A monster.

The sweetest sin.

Then a mysterious discovery forces Yuli to defect from the Yakuza.

Hunted. Branded as a traitor there’s nowhere left to hide.

Yuli must take the devil’s hand. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

And Yuli is about to be consumed.

Warnings: Cyberpunk MM romance, third-person present tense, dark MM romance that deals with mature themes of rape and torture with a HEA please be advised.

Review: ⟫ Unfortunately, this wasn’t the book for me. I felt that it showed a lot of promise and loved the story idea. However, the execution just didn’t work for me. I felt like I was reading (bad) fanfiction. There were leaps in the story that made little to no sense, the character development was non-existent and there was little to no world-building.

I don’t want to tear this down, so will leave it as a 1.5/5 from me, rounded up to 2.

I received an ARC from Booksprout.