Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Vendetta ~ Catherine Doyle (earc) review [@doyle_cat @chickenhsebooks @this_is_teen]

Vendetta (Blood for Blood #1)
Chicken House
February 24, 2015
352 pages
add to Goodreads/buy from TBD/or Amazon

US cover
Blood Will Spill, Hearts Will Break: With a fierce rivalry raging between two warring families, falling in love is the deadliest thing Sophie could do. An epic debut set outside modern-day Chicago.

For Sophie, it feels like another slow, hot summer in Cedar Hill, waitressing at her family’s diner and hanging out with her best friend Millie. But then someone moves into the long-abandoned mansion up the block--a family of five Italian brothers, each one hotter than the last. Unable to resist caramel-eyed Nicoli, Sophie finds herself falling for him -- and willfully ignoring the warning signs. Why are Nic's knuckles cut and bruised? Why does he carry an engraved switchblade? And why does his arrogant and infuriating older brother, Luca, refuse to let her see him? As the boys' dark secrets begin to come to light, Sophie is confronted with stinging truths about her own family, too. Suddenly, she's torn between two warring dynasties: the one she’s related to and the one she's now in love with. She'll have to choose between loyalty and passione. When she does, blood will spill, hearts will break. Because in this twisted underworld, dishonor can be the difference between life and death.
UK cover

I liked Sophie from nearly the very beginning of Catherine Doyle's Vendetta. I enjoyed her interactions with her best friend Millie and with her mother and found her background to be interesting.

We know something happened with her father that landed him in prison, but not what exactly it was. His prison sentence led to the ostracization of Sophie and her mother as well as their move to a smaller home.

I liked the questions we had about who Sophie had been, what kind of life they'd had - and just what brought it all down.

When we meet the male characters, the brothers who move into the nearly infamous, long vacant house down the block, I wan't sure about them. I did really like their introduction to the story and to Sophie but felt almost as if they were mysterious and appealing because they were supposed to be, not because they really were.

Though I wasn't sold on them - or any proposed romance - I enjoyed their role in the story.

Vendetta had more mysteries than I expected and even more twists. There were definite surprises with some things that seemed obvious coming to a different outcome.

While some of the characters and their relationships didn't quite click for me, where everyone ended up, what we knew about the characters, their pasts, the roles everyone played in both others' lives and different events all have me eager to read Book 2. Now that more is out in the open and we know more of the characters, I'm looking forward to the next book and seeing where the story - and the characters' lives - go.










digital copy received for review from publisher, via Edelweiss

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