Okay, romance lovers. We need to talk. No, really—we need to sit down, pour a glass of something strong, and have a serious conversation. Because I just finished Luciano by Eva Winners, and I went in expecting to be absolutely, unapologetically wrecked.
The scene was set. My wine was poured. My blanket was wrapped tight around me. I was ready for emotional destruction. For chaos. For obsession. I was ready to spiral, to text my friends in all caps at 1 a.m., to scream into my pillow because the mafia man on the page was just that deranged.
Instead?
It was fine.
And that’s exactly the problem.
Because “fine” is the last thing I want to feel when I crack open a mafia romance. I don’t pick up a book in this genre for comfort or predictability. I’m here for danger. For devotion that borders on delusion. For obsession so deep it rewrites a man’s moral compass.
Luciano should have been all of that. He had the ingredients—on paper. Sexy. Dangerous. Emotionally unavailable in all the right, romance-novel-approved ways. Still hopelessly in love with the wife who left him years ago. When he finds her again? He drags her, her best friend, and her secret child back to New York without hesitation or apology. It’s the exact kind of setup that screams messy, intense, I’m-about-to-lose-it.
I was ready to be undone.
But instead, Luciano never fully jumped off the page. He didn’t shake me. He didn’t haunt me. He wasn’t the kind of character I’d keep thinking about long after the final page. He was mafia on mute—checking the boxes but never really commanding the room.
I wanted him unhinged. I wanted the kind of obsession that makes you uncomfortable, the kind of love that feels a little dangerous. Instead, I got a man who felt like he’d read a manual on how to be an antihero but never truly embodied it. He was mafia-lite. Mafia with training wheels.
Now, let’s talk about Grace. Surprisingly, I liked her. She’s strong, grounded, emotionally mature. She doesn’t roll over the second Luciano shows up, and she sets boundaries in a way that felt refreshing. She’s clearly evolved since the woman we’re told she once was—and I appreciated that.
But again, everything between them felt expected. Familiar. Like the story was following a checklist instead of discovering itself in real time. I wanted tension that cut. I wanted longing that felt like it might collapse under its own weight. I wanted to feel the years of betrayal, the ache of time lost, the pain of loving someone you can’t forget.
Instead, we skimmed the surface. Their history—so full of potential emotional weight—was never fully explored. And for a second-chance romance, that’s nearly unforgivable.
And yes, the spice is there. The scenes are well-written. But they lack the emotional fire that makes steam truly work. There were no moments where I had to set the book down, blush, fan myself, or text someone “YOU NEED TO READ THIS SCENE RIGHT NOW.”
It was technically solid, but emotionally... flat. Heat without hunger. Passion without consequence.
But the real issue, the root of all my frustration?
It was too safe. And that’s not why any of us read mafia romance.
We’re not here for comfort. We’re not looking for Pinterest-worthy plotlines and morally gray characters who barely dip their toes into actual darkness. We’re here for the descent. We want the danger. We want the men who would burn the world to the ground just to keep the one woman they love breathing.
We want stories that don’t just entertain us—they wreck us. We want to be emotionally bruised, fully ruined, and left wondering why we now find questionable ethics so deeply romantic.
Luciano didn’t ruin me. It didn’t even shake me. I closed the book, nodded like “okay,” and moved on. It was the kind of book you read to fill the space between more intense reads—not something you lose sleep over. Not something you obsessively highlight or revisit just to relive one perfect, gut-wrenching line.
To be clear, I don’t think this is a bad book. If you’re new to the genre, or in the mood for something cleanly written, tropey, and low-stakes, this could be a solid pick. The pacing is good. The writing flows. The tropes are all accounted for.
But if you’re a seasoned reader of mafia romance? If you’ve been ruined before and you’re hoping to get ruined again? This one won’t scratch the itch.
So yes—Luciano was fine. But I don’t read mafia for “fine.”
I read it for the spiral. For the obsession. For the kind of love that scorches everything in its path. I read it for broken men who beg with their eyes and destroy with their hands. I read it to be pulled under, not gently guided to shore.
That said—I’ve downloaded the rest of the Belles and Mobsters series. Because I’m still holding out hope. Maybe Eva Winners is saving the real chaos for later. Maybe the next man will break me in all the ways I’ve been waiting for.
Because I’m not ready to give up yet.
Not until someone truly ruins me.
—Your Slightly Disappointed but Still Hopeful Book BFF
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