Thy Kingdom Come by Monica James

 

I got this impulsively when it was a Kindle cheapie because one of my friends raved about it in her review (hi Chelsea). Mafia romances aren't usually my thing but I really liked the title and the premise seemed interesting, although why an Irish mafioso would be wearing sugar skull face paint made me wonder if something went horribly wrong in the cover art consultation department...

But no. We learn right from the prologue why Punky (ugh, I hate his name lol) wears his weird face paint. It's so morbid it's a little along the lines of the Joker's "you know how I got these scars..." spiel, and considering the subject matter, it works. THY KINGDOM COME is set in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and is about a war between two Irish crime families, who, in addition to territory disputes still harbor lingering resentments over the troubles. Punky's family is Protestant and the Doyles, their bitter enemies, are Catholics who reign over Dublin. But now things have escalated and it's practically become an out and out war, which might just provide Punky with the perfect opportunity to avenge his mother's death.

Enter Babydoll (hate her name too lol), the mysterious blonde chick who catches his eye in a way that no other girl ever has (OF COURSE). Suddenly, she starts popping up everywhere he looks, and even though he knows she's a thief, Punky starts to wonder what else she might be-- and what she'll do to get it. The cat-dog pursuit between them kind of reminds me of the relationship between Batman and Catwoman (lol so many Batman references in this review), so I kind of dug it. And although it took me a while to warm up to Baby(doll) as a narrator, I did end up finding her more and more interesting as the book went on, although Punky was really the show-stealer in this book.

I actually think, story-wise, this is a better mafia book than Danielle Lori's. The Irish cant, the locations (Belfast and Dublin, both places I've actually been-- although not with people like this lol), the spicy romance, and the political machinations of the bad mafia people were all so fascinating to me. This book deserves like a thousand times more reviews than it had. The only things I didn't really like about it were that, at times, the writing could feel a bit sloppy (the author kept making her characters say words that I'm not sure working class crime dudes would use, like commence, and there were a lot of clunky or repetitive passages, like at one point "I ride her hard" was used in two paragraphs on the same page). I also really, really hated the characters' names. Punky and Babydoll? I sneer.

But everything else about this book was AMAZING and I will 100% be reading that sequel. Even though I predicted that twist, it was SUCH a mind-freak.

3.5 to 4 out of 5 stars