The Maddest Obsession (Made #2) – Danielle Lori

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15th April 2019

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Her dresses are too tight, her heels too tall. She laughs too loudly, eats without decorum, and mixes up most sayings in the book. Little do most know it’s just a sparkly disguise, there to hide one panic attack at a time.

Nobody can crack Gianna’s facade . . . no one anyway, until he comes along.

Most see a paragon of morality; a special agent upholding the law. In the New York underworld, others know him as a hustler, a killer, his nature as cold as the heart of ice in his chest. Christian Allister has always followed the life plan he’d envisioned in his youth, beneath the harsh lights of a frigid, damp cell. With a proclivity for order and the number three, he’s never been tempted to veer off course. But perhaps one should never say never . . .

One winter night and their lives intertwine. She hates him—his stone-cold demeanor, his arrogance and too-perceptive eye—but over the years, even as their games consist of insulting each other’s looks and intelligence, she begins to live to play with him.

Nowhere in Christian’s plans had he ever prepared for Gianna. She’s chaos embodied, not his type, and married, but none of that can stop his eyes from following her wherever she goes.

All along, she doesn’t even know that she’s his—his frustration, his fascination.

His maddest obsession.

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Wow, am I late to the Danielle Lori party.

I saw one of my Goodreads friends raving about the first book in this series years ago, but I’ve never been a big mafia fan, so I never tried it out. Then I got in the mood for a bad-girl heroine and this book was recommended to me, so I dove in.

When we first meet her, 20-year-old Gianna Russo is sitting in prison, having been caught with drugs on her person. She’s bailed out by Christian Allister a dirty FBI agent who works with Gianna’s mafia husband. For the next few years, they build an acquaintanceship (definitely not friendship) fuelled exclusively by Gianna’s snark and Christian’s dark, magnetic patience. (I realise this sounds like a weird description but trust me, that’s the only way to describe it).

Some of the best scenes in the book come after Gianna’s cheating husband is murdered and she begins to search for a boytoy. Christian getting rid (literally) of her date was EPIC. Many authors have tried to write scenes like that and it usually comes off as eyeroll-worthy, but Lori made it work. They sleep together, but then Christian leaves for three years – and when he returns, Gianna is married again, to a guy in his 80s. Will that stop them? Hell no.

This book does have the heroine cheating with the hero, but a) that doesn’t bother me, sometimes I specifically search it out and b) she had never slept with her aging husband. There’s actually zero OW drama and very minimal OM drama, so this book is totally safe.

The biggest appeal is the characterisation. Gianna is AWESOME. She’s a bad dresser, wild, and out of control, the kind of woman who’s usually the OW – she actually slept with her stepson Nico once, hero of the previous book. As for Christian, I’m not surprised at all that 99% of my Goodreads friends would be willing to let him give them babies. He’s cool, collected, possessive, and obsessive. All wins. There’s a line where he’s first described, when Gianna thinks something like ‘this is definitely an agent who’s used his handcuffs on a woman in bed’, and it honestly was surprisingly evocative.

At times I found him a bit TOO deep and mysterious, but I can’t deny that he has some awesomely possessive lines. As for Gianna, she has some awesomely funny one-liners. They totally work.

As for the mafia setting, I’m kind of meh about it; looking back on it, it doesn’t actually feel like there was much about the life in the book. Most of it is pure relationship stuff. Which works for me because like I said, I can take or leave mafia books, it did make the book drag in the middle somewhat.

Get it on Amazon