Mobster romances are definitely getting their due these days, so I decided to dip my toes into the puddle with Marry Me Not, the second volume in the House of Ferraro series. Tragically, this one put me on a crash-course with an alpha-hole hero who made me want to punch him in the face. No matter how hot the author tried to make him, or how much effort went into trying to make me believe the book’s TSTL heroine had a chance of looking up at a rainy sky without drowning, both main characters left me feeling dismayed, to say the least.
Fabiana Messero is an innocent in every possible way and she’s been intentionally kept that way as her family has been hoping to marry her off into another of the high-ranking mob families in their world. Unfortunately, the man her brother picks for her hates her immediately. Cosimo is rude and cruel, and wants Fabiana to end the engagement. But he also has Pants Feelings for her, oh no.
Cosimo Ferraro is behaving like a jerk all due to one paranoid reason: he thinks his mendacious mommy Vita intentionally orchestrated the match between himself and Fabiana so Vita could control him and thus the family’s earnings. This is why he doesn’t date and doesn’t want women around him. Unfortunately for him, he’s been abstinent for the past three years, so his pants are blazing.
Fabiana isn’t Vita Ferraro’s doormat, and Cosimo ends up needing her when his father, Gino, is murdered, putting him in the position of taking over the Ferraro crime family. He marries Fabiana but tells her it will be a brief, six month affair until everything’s in order and he figures out who murdered Gino, and then he’ll let her go, scott free. Well, you know what they say about wishes and horses…
Marry Me Not is filled with too many unappealing people trying to appeal to me, which makes me want to shut them up mid-sentence. If they were a podcast, I’d skip the ads. If they were a door-to-door salesman, I’d slam the whole thing shut in their faces.
Fabiana is utterly useless as a heroine. She’s too tiny and weak and sweet and young and naive to hold down a regular job; she has not been equipped to do much of anything and naturally Will Not Learn. She’s a “good Italian girl” who is magically a natural at sex.
We’re told again and again she’s not a doormat and has the spine and spirit that Cosimo is looking for in a wife (even though he hates his mother who has these but is Evil) but her character never develops or demonstrates either. Everything I know about her, I was told, not shown.
For example, she wants to become a potter. Cosimo funds and opens a shop for her, but the story never shows her working at this shop, so I never saw her at work, or understood that pottery was a goal for her.
She goes to classes and there are a few throwaway scenes that don’t advance the plot beyond “she likes art.” It was never an integrated part of her character. It’s like an accessory stuck to the story to make her, I don’t know, cute? Artsy? Dusty and covered in clay?
Cosimo is so paranoid that his mother wants to control him and/or steal the family business that he steals Fabiana’s phone to look through it and ‘catch’ her talking to his mother (which he fails to do). He’s cruel to Fabiana, suggesting at one point that she is such a fuckup that everyone in her family is going to die due to her incompetence. His moods change wildly and he comes off as irrational in the extreme. And I so don’t care that he hasn’t fucked a woman in three years! This is mentioned so many times that it’s almost absurd. That’s not some sign of physical fortitude! Even his dick is throbbing, angry, and short-lasting.
Our hero and heroine are so whiny. The whiniest. Cosimo whines to Fabiana when she turns him down after his attempts at groveling because oh, no, he needs a temporary wife. Do mafia organizations really care that much about broken engagements?
Fabiana whines and rages when Cosimo treats her like crap in his immature and annoying attempts at driving her off. They fight all the time, which is supposed to show passion or a spark or something but does not. The main bond here seems to be sex, because I didn’t credibly believe that Cosimo even liked Fabiana, let alone wanted to stay married to her. He calls her ‘Nettle’ because of her needling, burrowing ways – ways which I again did not pick up at all from her behavior in the story.
The plot makes no sense. Why do they need to be married for six months to impress the mafia?! Is the Mob that into Traditional Family Values that Cosimo has to marry her? They couldn’t just fake the engagement for a little while longer?
And then there’s the murder subplot. The answer is obvious, clearly telegraphed well in advance, and seemed mostly to exist to seed a fourth book.
Marry Me Not could have been an over-the-top fun ride with extreme characters, but instead it’s just a ridiculous, damp squib of a book. The hero is awful and unchanging, the heroine has no depth beyond whining, and the conflicts between them are inane. It deserves to sleep with the fishes.
This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviewed at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance job.
