Bound by Temptation by Cora Reilly

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The fourth book in Cora Reilly's Born in Blood Chronicles is Bound by Temptation. This book focuses on the last Scuderi sister, the youngest Liliana. We've seen since book 1 that Lily has had a super crush (what she called love, but everybody else didn't think so) on Aria's bodyguard Romero. 

I was really excited to read this. I really felt for Liliana and how she was the youngest sister but always felt like Giana and Aria treated her like she was too young and kept her out of a lot of conversations. We do see a little bit of a time jump in the beginning again with some of the meetings between Lily and Romero during the first few books. The main story line in this starts out with her mother being diagnosed with cancer and having to take care of her by herself. Their younger brother Fabiano is starting to be inducted in the Outfit, so their father doesn't really let me be around Lily or their mother anymore. 

I loved most of this book. The forbidden feeling between Lily and Romero was done really well and you could just feel the pining between the two of them. After her mother passes, Lily gets kind of sucked into her grief and ends up fainting since nobody noticed that she wasn't sleeping or eating like she should've been. It was so heart-wrenching to read what Lily dealt with and really had me crying and a lot of the situations I could really connect with because I had felt or dealt with similar things with my mom's passing. Aria ends up convincing their father to allow Lily to come visit for the summer so they can take care of her. This time is when Lily and Romero finally cave into their yearnings and start to form a real relationship. Where this book lost it for me was the main conflict. 

Lily is suddenly required to come home since she's been promised in marriage. However, it's a daughter trade between her and another man's daughter. Lily is supposed to marry this man older than her father and in return her father is marrying a young 20-year-old. I really didn't like this and that Lily initially didn't push back more against the marriage. I get that there was going to most likely be a turf war between the two mafias, but I didn't like that she actually got married to old man. I didn't like how she treated Romero before the marriage and wasn't willing to fight for her love until he was forcing the consummation. Then we had to deal with everybody trying to escape and the two mafias starting war. 

The ending and Lily just ended up disappointing me a little bit in the end and I had to take a moment to really process how I was going to rate it once I finished. My initial gut reaction was 3-stars, but after thinking more and for how much I enjoyed the first three-quarters of the book, I went with 4-stars.

Have you read Bound by Temptation?

Bookishly Yours, 

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Bound by Temptation, Cora Reilly, 4-stars, 0 days, eBook, 260 pages, published in 2015