Review: Boss by J.L. Lora

Rating:


I am quite out of words and don't know how to start this review. I mean, there are a lot of jumbled thoughts in my head but I really don't know how to organize them.


I think I'll start with: I took this book because I've read Bethany-Kris' review and we have discussed the book. Like ohmygosh! lol I think it is an integral part of understanding this book not that it matters to me because when there's blood and guns I'm all in. Anyway, she distinguished the difference of this being a mafia romance and a cartel. So I'm going with those. I think my only experience with cartel is the book Cartel and The Gypsy Brothers by Lili St. Germain (yeah, I finally remember the book in answer to my IG story).


I actually have a hard time getting into the story at first. It is fast paced and there was never really a down time. Like you have to know the characters as you go along like in the way they act, they talk, their thoughts and their interactions with other people. But I think it was presented in a good way as the reader becomes the judge of the personality of the character and not how the author wants the reader to see it.


There lies where the distinction with mafia and cartel plays an important role. If you've read mafia (of course you know they're Italian), you know there's an unspoken rule of the status of the females in the family. There's also a certain way business is done and a lot of rules.

In this book, it is a group of organized family, or what we call the cartel. Now, I am not well versed in cartel business but they also dabbled in drugs, guns and trafficking. The Trinity's main business was in drugs, and they're actually the supplier. **spoiler alert: (This is where Lucian's role is actually very essential and one not really explored in the book). **


In a way, this book made me think and made me read between the lines and connect the dots. It kind of irk me at first that there are time jumps or that there are scenes that felt like they were cut and that there should be more. In the end though, it added a sense of mysteriousness to the girls, the Trinity, and to what lengths they would do to help each other.

The time jumps felt like missing pieces for me. But I think one essential in the pacing of the story and where everything is going. The start, even though it is fast paced, feels like a slow burn, like it makes you want to feel angst and wants you to spill some blood and when you get to that part, it is somehow not exhausting.


Usually, I shy away from revenge books because they are exhausting. Like the author can't stress enough why the character needs to do this and that and that hate is strike with a match so that the flames would burn higher and higher as if the characters' lives depended on it. And one thing I find exhausting, emotionally.

This book however, is not like that. I actually don't know how to explain it but it's just something you would definitely enjoy the ride.

The relationship between Alec and Carissa is an all consuming feeling but is something that didn't leave them love-stupid but made them more cunning and the games they played were rather refreshing and hot and humorous!

One thing I love about this book is that you never know what will happen next. It would just feel like you've been blindsided because you never expected it to turn that way and that would make you feel like you miss something but you can't stop yourself to devour the words just so you'd know what will happen next.


Definitely an action packed story with a right amount of angst, killing and sexiness. And for a DEBUT novel? Kudos to the author! The Trinity is something to look forward to!