Bound by Hatred by Cora Reilly

🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

After finishing Bound by Duty, I immediately jumped into book three of Cora Reilly's Born in Blood Chronicles, Bound by Hatred. This book focuses on Aria's sister Gianna and Luca's brother Matteo. We've seen them banter and argue with each other in the first two books, but this one does a little bit of a time jump.

We see the initial few meetings from Matteo's and Gianna's views during Aria and Luca's wedding and marriage. Gianna is very much against the mafia life and just wants to escape and live normal. After Matteo tricks Gianna's father into allowing them to be married (to save her from marrying an older, very abusive man), things between them escalate even further. Usually I'm not a big fan of enemies to lovers. I do understand why people say there's a fine line between hate and love, but if someone is trying to hide their feelings of love or like for their person it's just really hard for me to understand being mean to them. But I am also a person that doesn't really get angry in confrontations. I get hurt instead. So while this was a little bit of a struggle for me sometimes with Gianna since she kept trying to keep her "pride" and was arguing just to argue. I also didn't like that when people assumed she was just being a b*tch, she didn't say no, that's not why or what I'm doing. Instead she just went, since you think I'm a b*tch, I'll be a b*tch. 

I did like that Matteo just was gone for Gianna the entire time and really just wanted her to give into her deeper feelings. He could tell and read the signs that she was attracted to him and more. He really made this book for me. I loved that he pushed her buttons, but it was all for fun. As soon as it was time to be serious or he noticed that what he said hurt her, he would stop pushing and really show her he cared. Despite Gianna annoying me for a lot of the book, I really liked the way Matteo was able to break through her walls and really get her to allow herself to fall for him. I also didn't like the ending and that everyone, including Matteo, misunderstood the situation and Gianna allowed them too, I just had to give this book 5-stars. Matteo just did it for me and is my second favorite Cora Reilly hero (after Dante). He just has that charm that gets you no matter how hard to try to keep him at bay. I am definitely enjoying Cora Reilly and am so happy I added her to my tbr!

Have you read Bound by Hatred?

Bookishly Yours, 

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Bound by Hatred, Cora Reilly, 5-stars, 1 day, eBook, 280 pages, published in 2015