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Review
4 “lovely” stars!
The Wedding Pact, written by Katee Roberts, is the second book in the O’Malleys series. This series is about three mafia families in Boston – the O’Malley’s, the Sheridan’s, and the Halloran’s. In the first book, a wedding between the O’Malley’s and the Sharidan’s allied the two families, leaving the Halloran’s as a mutual enemy. The Wedding Pact is about Carrigan O’Malley and James Halloran.
Seamus O’Malley, Carrigan’s father, is the head of one of the Boston crime families, and she is just a pawn in her father’s life. Raised by a crime lord, Carrigan has hopes and dreams that she will never see. In her father’s eyes she will never be good enough, and Carrigan finds herself doing what is best for the family, not what is best for her. She does not like that her family is dangerous and ruthless but she understands it’s their way of life.
James, put in a difficult position when his father was arrested and his older brother was killed, was forced to take over the family business even if he didn’t want to. Though he has grown up around the mafia his whole life, he isn’t cruel like his father. Knowing that his younger brother, Ricky, is a fuckup, he refused to let Ricky take over and exacerbate problems for the business and make relations worse between the crime families. James wanted to be better and turn the business around but finds it difficult to change the person he is.
Not for the first time, he wondered what his mother would think of the men her beloved sons had turned into.
…
The only link James had to her was the album Carrigan had taken – a shrine to the man he might have been in different circumstances.
That man was dead and gone as surely as his mother was. In reality, he’d never stood a chance. His course in life was set the second he came into this world as a Halloran, and any chance he had to choose a different path had gone up in smoke with Brendan’s death.
Carrigan and James met four months earlier and spent one sizzling moment together. It didn’t last long though when James discovered who she really was and realized that she was actually the woman he was supposed to kidnap to help advance his fathers regime. Since then, their history has understandably created a bigger strain between the O’Malley’s and the Halloran’s even though the truce between the two families remains intact. As long as they each stay away from each other, all is well.
Carrigan and James run into each other at the bar and you can tell there is unfinished business. Their sexy encounter has stuck with them and they actively fight the desire swirling in the air. Carrigan has something of James’s and he wont stop until he gets it back. This puts him in Carrigan’s path more than she would like and the more she sees him, the more she wants him.
Even if the attraction is there and they want to be together, Carrigan and James cannot have a real relationship because she is promised to marry another. With a list of names approved by her father, the decision of who to marry is nothing more than a business deal. Her life is controlled completely by her father with no regard for her feelings or wants, and she ends up finding solace in James.
She’d spent hours on end there, praying with every ounce of will her sixteen-year-old heart could muster up. Praying for someone to save her.
Silence had been her only reply.
So she’d gone looking for salvation in other places.
In all the years since, the closest she’d come to salvation was what she felt that night in James’s arms.
As they spend more time together, they find they are more alike than they thought. Both want a better life that is not only based on the family needs. Their interactions make them strive for normalcy, and they want to forget that they are enemies and just give into their desires. She feels different and safe when she is with James, and that scares her. She is on borrowed time and doesn’t want to fall for James, when in reality she is already fallen for him.
”I’m never going to get enough of you, lovely. Never.”
That’s what she was afraid of. Because she felt the same way – that this was the end all, be all, and everything after this would be like living in a shadow.
Things are never good between rival mafia families and everything become worse when their relationship is revealed. What will happen when she is forced to marry someone else and the one she loves is still her enemy?
I really liked Carrigan and James as a couple. Their interactions were fun and the banter made me laugh. She tried so hard to resist him, and though they were sworn enemies, they felt a connection and the pull was too strong to ignore. Carrigan and James were hot together and there is definitely some steam. James wanted her from the start and he definitely had moments that made me swoon. I loved that they were what each other needed. She made him believe he could turn the business around into a more positive light and he made her feel like she was worth everything.
Things with James might have started off in the strangest way possible, but he’d been solid every step of the way. He was the only person in her life who put her first for the woman she was, rather than the assets she could bring to the negotiating table.
*ARC generously provided by RockStarLit via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*
The O’Malleys series
The Marriage Contract (#1)
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The Wedding Pact (#2)
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An Indecent Proposal (#3)
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