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Wanting to get caught up in Maggie Cole's Mafia Wars series, I immediately jumped into book 2, Broken Fighter. Jenn (The Book Refuge) is hosting a live show with Maggie Cole on July 31st. I've been wanting to read her books since Jenn first talked about them. I originally wanted to start her during the Mafia Romance Readathon, but ran out of time. The live show finally put a fire under my butt and made me want to get to as many of her books as possible. Thankfully there's only 4 out right now, but the 5th book comes out August 1st. I applied this book to the Summer of Swoon board 2 prompt trope outside comfort zone. I don't want to spoil too much, but since we are aware in the first book, this book has the surprise pregnancy trope, which I'm not too fond of. Also hiding the relationship, although it made a little more sense than usual being their both connected to different mafia families.
Broken Fighter focuses on middle brother Boris and Nora. We see them as a couple in the previous book, but this book starts in the past and kind of shows the breadth of their relationship, starting when they're both in their late teens. There's a couple time skips to move forward in time line to get to the main events that progress their relationship. As we've learned, Boris and the Ivanovs are kind of connected to the bratva, but Boris is the main person still connected to them. He still has a deal with the head to meet once a year and do whatever he wants. Nora is sister to the non-mafia O'Malleys, but they do get dragged into the mafia side from time to time. Since they have the name and relations other crime families still come for them. The Italian Rossis start coming for the O'Malleys and specifically Nora and this gives them the final push to go all in.
This book was a little bit of a let down for me. While I overall enjoyed the writing and story once again, I felt a little bit bored. As I mentioned before, there's a lot of time skips. There's small ones mid-chapter that are days or weeks. Then at a new chapter there's a months or years time jump. It just felt too much for one book. We didn't even really catch up to the present time set up in the first book until about 70% through. I wanted to see more of the current time and less of the will-they-won't-they stuff for most of it. I did enjoy how protective and confident Boris was about his love for Nora. There was also too much hypocrisy from her family about Boris being Russian. It just came from everyone, even his best friend and Nora's older brother Killian. I expected it from the higher ups in her family, but not from everyone. Then the later parts where we're more in the present time felt rushed to me. Less than 30% to set up the next little bit just wasn't enough. I almost wish that some of the earlier parts of their relationship was a prequel novella to this and then we could focus on the more current storyline. I just was left feeling a little "blah" at the end of the book. Also, I didn't like when Nora freaked out on the girls during her wedding dress fitting. I understand why she was being protective of the guys, but I also feel like she could've been at least as understanding as the guys about how much it is to take in a process for someone not used to their lifestyle. It just seemed a little out of character to me. But she's pregnant so it was kind of blamed on that. Which I felt was a little bit of a cop out.
Even though I'm intrigued to read the next book, I didn't jump into it right away. I just wasn't in the mood to move on. I know that the couple teased met in the first book so we won't go back in time too much, but there will be some back tracking. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze it in before the live show later this month. We'll see where my mood takes me!
Have you read Broken Fighter?
Bookishly Yours,
Stasi🍎
STATISTICS: Broken Fighter, Maggie Cole, 4-stars, 1 day, eBook, 416 pages, published in 2021
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