Lucy Ives just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
She certainly didn’t ask to get herself involved in mafia business, not when all she wants is peacefully get her degree and go on to live in calm she deserves after all her years of struggle.
Sadly, sometimes life just takes our decisions away from our hands and makes them for us. In Lucy’s case, it has been decided she is to be Asher Black’s fake fiancée.
The good sides? If she says yes, she won’t have to worry about finding the money she doesn’t have to pay for her tuition and will be offered a stable, well-paid job after her graduation.
The bad sides? Aside from being a CEO of a billionaire company, Asher Black also happens to be a former mafia hitman. The word former doesn’t really register for some, and so life along his side is still a danger to anyone – especially somebody who is officially considered to be his fiancée.
Lucy doesn’t really have much choice in that matter. Saying no results in imminent death. It is very likely, however, that saying yes might also result in her ultimate death.
Now is the time for her to choose one of two evils.
***
(A song that makes me think of Asher Black to get you in the mood first).
First of all, I’d like to say a huge THANK YOU to Parker S. Huntington for choosing to name the protagonist of her first book Lucy. The closest I came to having my name mentioned in a story was somebody’s mother who also happened to be a demon (White Hot Kiss by Jennifer Armentrout) or somebody’s car (Eyes Turned Skyward by Rebecca Yarros). In real life, I know more dogs than people wearing my name, so with full honesty, I was delighted to find not only a human character – but also a protagonist – named Lucy.
Lucy herself also possesses many traits I can identify with. She has spent her gap year travelling around the world doing voluntary work (something I hope to do after I’m done with my Bachelor’s degree). It is also not often we encounter a book character having done this, so I appreciate that about Lucy very much.
I feel like this particular book is more of a mean for setting up the grounds for the following stories in the series. It explains a lot of how the world Parker introduces us to in her Five Syndicates series works and briefly presents some of the characters we are going to get to know better in the upcoming sequels.
This doesn’t mean it’s not interesting, though. We have to keep in mind that this is Parker S. Huntington’s debut. She was twenty-two when she published it. Twenty. Two. Just two years older than I am now, and I’m nowhere near finishing one of my hundred million novels I’m constantly trying to bring to an end.
I love that she has an idea of how to write those books. Each has its own theme and sports theme-connected quotes at the beginning of each chapter. As a goner for quotes, this is definitely a way to get into my word-loving heart.
The theme for Asher Black is courage. Lucy’s journey as a protagonist shows her discovering the courage inside of herself and developing it to the point where she’s proud of who she’s become. I live and breathe for strong female characters, but it also agitates me when they’re too strong. I have grown up with 15-year-old female protagonists who proceeded to save the world. For a long time, I believed I had to be like them. This led to many personality complexes and a whole lot of confusion over who I actually was versus whom I felt like I needed to be, which is probably normal for a teenager, but maybe not to this extent.
It is nice to appreciate that an average university student is terrified by the mere concept of having to start living life on their own once they’re done with their degree. At a certain age, we are not ready to save the world, but we can try to develop that courage at a rate we feel comfortable with, and I feel like this isn’t stressed enough.
I am also astonished with the amount of research the author had to have conducted in order to write this book. The security measures seemed like something out of this world, but I Googled it an apparently, some prototypes of bulletproof clothing do indeed exist.
With my unhealthy obsession with crime documentaries, I do happen to know a little something about the actual mafia world in the United States of America, and a lot of what I found in Parker’s own depiction of the Five Syndicates coincided with what I’d learned during my long hours of binge-watching shows that never cease to concern my family and friends. I’d like to stress very much that I’m not an expert, but I do appreciate it when authors put effort into making sure what they write is not only believable, but also as accurate as possible.
It is obvious a lot of thought, research, planning and heart was put into writing this novel, and the entire series in general. All that effort pays off, because it reads well and provides an escape from reality we all need sometimes.
bookofeel 