Nero
- Feb 1
- 3 min read
Alliance, Book One
by S.J. Tilly
Payton Running away from home at 17 wasn’t easy. Let’s face it though, nothing before, or in the ten years since, has ever been easy for me. And I’m doing okay. Sorta. I just need to keep scraping by, living under the radar. Staying out of people’s way, off people’s minds. So when a man walks through my open patio door, stepping boldly into my home, and my life, I should be scared. Frightened. Terrified. But I must be more broken than I realized, because I’m none of those things. I’m intrigued. And I’m wondering if the way to take control of my life is by giving in to him. Nero The first time I took a man’s life, I knew there’d be no going back. No normal existence in the cards for me. So instead of walking away, I climbed a mountain of bodies, and created my own destiny. By forming The Alliance. And I was fine with that. Content enough to carry on. Until I stepped through those open doors, and into her life. I should’ve walked away. Should’ve gone right back out the door I came through. But I didn’t. And now her life is in danger. But that’s the thing about being a bad man. I’ll happily paint the streets red to protect what’s mine. And Payton is mine. Whether she knows it or not.
A quick little review of this one:
So, I came upon this book in a r/RomanceBooks thread on Reddit, and I admit that I immediately bought the book without even reading the synopsis.
From Reddit:
MCs meet when MMC breaks into her apartment to hide out from the police. She then proceeds to fall asleep while in the presence of said unknown criminal because she has zero survival skills.
She also leaves her door open afterwards in case he decides to come back!
He warns her to keep her balcony door closed, otherwise he'd take it as an invitation.
What can I say? It sounded fun. And deep into yet another major reading slump, I figured it could be a quick and easy read to get me back into it.
And it did start off really fun as well, but the “zero survival skills” that initially drew me to the story quickly got annoying and frustrating. I guess I liked that first scene because she somehow unconsciously felt safe with him, which in a fucked up way seems a bit romantic, but it soon became clear that it wasn’t a Nero exception, but simply Peyton being a TSTL FMC.
Still, it was an OK read and I never thought to DNF it, just started rolling my eyes a lot.
I also would have loved there to be a bit more plot. The antagonists were barely present at all. We had a brief sighting of Mikhail at Nero’s B-Day party, but nothing more than that before the finale. And Nikki was such a blah character. Nauseatingly cliché jealous female, and she had the most anticlimactic end. Honestly, she could have been completely cut out of the story: just have Mikhail send the invite and give him more room as the villain at the same time.
⭐⭐ 🌶️🌶️🌶️.5
~🖤~ FAVOURITE QUOTES ~🖤~ |
“You better kill me with your first shot.” |
“You know,” he says, when he sees where I’m looking. “Cinderella only left one shoe behind.” I fight my embarrassment by rolling my eyes. “Yeah, and Prince Charming didn’t break into her home to find her.” Nero grins. “The villains always have more fun.” |
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