Raze by Tillie Cole

⭐⭐⭐💫

This month the theme for the Smart Women Read Romance exclusive patreon review was contemporary dark romance. Raze won the poll. This is the first book in Tillie Cole's Scarred Souls series. I was able to use this for the Summer of Swoon prompt new to you author and the Ripped Bodice Summer Bingo prompt mafia.

Raze was taken as a young boy to live and fight in the Gulog, a Georgian prison with underground fights. It's been years since he was brought here and is known as 818, his prisoner number. When there's a prison break, all Raze knows is that he needs to return to New York City to get revenge against Alik. He can't remember much of his life after being drugged and completely isolated, but he carved into his cell Alik's name and address in case he ever got out. He comes across Kisa and instantly feels a protective instinct towards her. Kisa is the daughter to the head of the local Bratva and engaged to Alik. She is still mourning the death of her soulmate years after her is charged with killing her twin brother (and heir to the Bratva) and ends up dying in a bus crash. Kisa runs The Dungeon, the local underground fighting ring and when Raze joins to take out Alik, they find themselves thrown together more and more. Kisa struggles against the instant connection to Raze and starts to see pieces of her dead soulmate in him.

Alright, first off, let's just get this out of the way. I thought that Kisa was not a good heroine. There were times where she was okay and then she would turn around and make the silliest decision. It just didn't feel like she was actually aware of the peril her life could be in despite her saying it was. There were also a couple other people that made just as silly... alright, let's just say it... stupid decisions that I did not understand at all. Despite my frustrations, Raze and his storyline really made this book for me. I was so intrigued to learning more about him and to really see him work through what he experienced. Although, I do have to say that I feel like we spent a lot more time experiencing Kisa's trauma at the hands of Alik versus dealing with the trauma Raze went through. I also really wish that Alik was dealt with earlier in the book. Most of the plot dragged out getting to the fight between Alik and Raze. While it was nice to see him finally get his revenge, it also didn't feel as vindicating as I wanted it to be. I don't know, it just felt kind of like "that's it?" when he finally kills him.

Another thing I really didn't like was the set-up for Raze's one friend, 392. I was really hoping that we would get to see his book 2nd (and at that point intrigued enough to read his book). Now spoiler alert, but 392 is caught again and forced to fight Raze. For Raze to get revenge against Alik, he has to kill his only friend! I did not like that and honestly, that was the most upsetting part of the book to me. I also didn't like how many times we saw our heroine assaulted. I mean it continues throughout the book and even gets badly assaulted right before the big fight, which is the climax of the book. Also it was very wordy and went into a lot more detail than I'm comfortable with. It's not triggering to me, but it just feels very yucky. That paired with her stupid choices that leads to things escalating was just so exasperating for me.

So, at this point I'm not sure if I will be picking up more in this series. I'm not saying never, but I think with the almost glorified rape scenes it's not something I'm going to gravitate too. From the live show it seems that Tillie Cole can be pretty polarizing, so we'll see what happens. There's just too many other mafia romances out there I want to try. Like I said though, I'm not writing her or this series off.

Have you read Raze?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Raze, Tillie Cole, 3.5 stars, 0 days, eBook, 256 pages, published in 2014, indie published