The O’Malley’s, #1
by Katee Robert
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Dark Succession by Katee Robert is a contemporary mafia romance and the first book in The O’Malleys series. This is a new reissue of a book that was previously published as The Marriage Contract. The book jumps between several point of view characters, including our two main love interests.
Teague O’Malley and Callista Sheridan are tired of being used as pawns in two of Boston’s major crime families. To try to keep the tentative peace that has held for several years, they are ordered to marry each other to form an alliance. Both of them carry many secrets, some of which could easily get them killed.
I meant to read just a few chapters before bed, but I accidentally stayed up way late and read the whole thing in one sitting. The book opens with a bang (kind of literally) and I really needed to see where it was going to go.
As the introduction to a series, we learn a lot about all the different families and the many other people who are somehow connected to them. So there’s a lot of information here, but as evidenced by my reading this all at once, it really held my attention. One thing I found myself wishing for was a family tree for each of the crime families; that would really have helped me track who was who.
Our two main characters have many layers and I found them very interesting. I especially loved their chemistry together.
There are also a ton of secondary characters who also piqued my interest. Thankfully, this is a six-book series so I’ll get to read more about them in the future. Now I just really need the next book in the series. Katee is pretty much on my auto-read list at this point.
Tropes in this book include: arranged marriage, mafia, insta-love
CW: murder, death, firearms, sexual assault, abduction, mentions of torture
I received a copy of this book to review. All opinions contained herein are my own. Dark Succession releases on Tuesday, May 9th, 2023.
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