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After reading Brutal Prince for the Mafia Romance Readathon, I knew I wanted to continue in the series. As mentioned in both of those posts, Jenn from The Book Refuge is doing a live show wit Sophie Lark June 19th. The second book in her Brutal Birthright series is Stolen Heir. For my summer reading challenges I applied Stolen Heir to the new/young-adult prompt for the Romancing Summer Challenge and the starts with "S" prompt for the Summer of Swoon.
Stolen Heir starts shortly after Brutal Prince. Miko is the new leader of the Polish mafia in Chicago and wants revenge on the Griffins and Gallos after killing his adoptive father. He creates this elaborate plan that starts with kidnapping Nessa, the youngest Griffin daughter (and sister to Callum). Nessa is the ray of sunshine and seems almost out of place in the Irish mafia. She is just inherently good and kind. She's also training to be a ballerina, although is aware that she will stay as a corps member. She is however starting to get into choreography.
I absolutely loved Nessa and really felt for her at times. I loved that she was almost timid around others because they judged her on her appearance, but was able to really let go and "be" when she was dancing. This is a captor/captive romance, but it was done so well. Miko almost instantly starts to second-guess himself when he does or says something to Nessa. Partly it's based of his original judgements of her being delicate and naïve, but he quickly learns how smart she is. Another aspect I loved about Nessa's character is how she loves to read and easily picks up languages. She pretty much learns basic Polish just from reading a translation and original book and learning random words from the maid (like shampoo and food stuffs).
Nessa also learns to find herself when not under the constant presence of her family and I loved seeing her learn who she is. It was also really fun to see her create a ballet retelling of Beauty & the Beast and even breaks the 3rd wall a little talking about how she herself is in a Beauty & the Beast situation. I also loved the nods to the Disney movie, including a "you will come to dinner" scene followed by some dancing in a ballroom. I also loved how Miko is able to completely cut himself off but Nessa somehow just seems to naturally read him. I also loved how he has bookish tattoos mixed into his full sleeves that relate to his twin sister's favorite books. There was just a lot of little nods and mentions throughout that appealed to me as a reader.
I'm really excited to continue the series and am loving Sophie Lark's writing style. It's very easy to read. I am definitely going to keep going in this and her other series. We'll see how many I can get through before the live show!
Have you read Stolen Heir?
Bookishly Yours,
Stasi🍎
STATISTICS: Stolen Heir, Sophie Lark, 5-stars, 2 days, eBook, 276 pages, published in 2020
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