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Review: Coerced Wife (New York Underworld #2) by Charmaine Pauls


Title: Coerced Wife
Series: New York Underworld #2
Author: Charmaine Pauls
Genre: Dark Mafia Romance
Tropes: Enemies to Lovers/Touch Her and Die
Fake Relationship/Forced Proximity
Release Date: November 18, 2024

BLURB
He offers me protection, but the bed of a killer isn’t a safe place to be.

I got myself in a predicament. Powerful people on both sides of the law want me dead. A killer needs me alive for his own selfish reasons, reasons I never could’ve imagined in my wildest dreams.
I’m not safe in the bed of a cold–blooded murderer, but I don’t have a choice. On the one hand, he offers me protection, and on the other, he tightens the noose.
I’m caught in his web of lies and deceit. Every truth that’s uncovered destroys me a little more. But he’s already injected me with his venomous seduction.

Before I know it, he’ll swallow me whole.

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EXCERPT

As for the rest, desolation rips through me when I push the door open and walk through it. Every step I take is like walking on a bed of glowing red coals.
Saverio stands on the gallery, talking to Dante. His smile slips when he sees me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, wrapping an arm around my waist.
I plaster a smile on my face. “Nothing.”
The way his eyes tighten in the corners says he doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t push the issue.
I stand like a statue at his side while people file past in a steady row to prematurely congratulate us and to make mindless conversation.
A short while later, Luigi asks the DJ to kill the music. He makes an announcement, but everything is like white noise in my ears.
Saverio takes my hand and pushes a ring with a huge oval diamond over my finger. I can’t stop staring at the monstrosity that shines under the lights, the huge stone weighing down my hand. Saverio holds my gaze as he lifts my fingers to his lips and kisses the ring, something dark and deviant sparking in those eyes that resemble the color of an iced-over lake. Clapping follows and then cheers.
Lowering his head, he claims my lips in a kiss that lasts too long to be appropriate for the occasion. This time, wolf whistling sounds.
It all happens in a blur. The one moment I’m Anya Brennan, and in the next, I’m to become Ms. De Luca.
“Soon,” Saverio whispers in my ear, sealing that frightening promise with a tender kiss on my neck.


MY REVIEW


Saverio is becoming more and more possessive about his soon to be wife, as she's becoming more and more distant, emotionally at least. Anya knows letting him into her heart is a bad idea, but sometimes she simply can't resist him. They are supposed to be fake as he keeps saying, for her protection, but sometimes she wonders if they're developing actual feelings apart from their undeniable physical connection. While her heart is longing for him, and her body is completely on board with that, her mind is going in the opposite direction, and it's tearing her apart.


Sav and Anya are fire. But they're also frustrating af. Their physical connection is stronger every day, but their emotional connection is murky. I can see real feelings there, and Sav is confusing Anya all the time with his fanatical possessiveness on one hand, then on the other, reminding her that they're only in a relationship because he's forcing her for her own protection. The ending is a serious doozy, as they tend to be in Charmaine's worlds, and now I'm even more worried about these two, especially Anya. I have to know how they're going to get themselves out of the big mess they're in, and more importantly, that they finally admit they love each other and will have the future I can sort of glimpse at times.

ALSO AVAILABLE

COMING SOON
Releasing December 16

AUTHOR BIO


Charmaine loves to write dark and edgy romance that will melt both your e-reader and your heart. She's a mom of two teenagers, an adorable dog, and a dominant cat. Her country of birth is South Africa where many of her stories play off. Her French husband kidnapped her to the south of France where she currently lives with her family. When she's not writing, you'll find her in the kitchen baking cakes or in the gym lifting weights (because ... all those cakes!).

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