Deep Thrall C.D. Reiss

 Deep Thrall

C.D. Reiss

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊⯨

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶🌶

Blurb:

When I was claimed by a monster who said my Strega witch blood was powerful, I didn’t believe him - because nothing shows you how powerless you are like a forced marriage to a vampire. Girls like me are cautionary tales, not the heroine of the story.

Then my mother walked out of the shadows and into Italy on a ray of light.

This time, her lessons lead to power instead of pain. All the vagueness of my sixth sense suddenly has a shape… and I can sculpt it into a weapon.

Carmine Montefiore is not my husband by choice. He’s a vampire who scented me. He’s a mafioso who kidnapped me. But like a girl with nothing to lose, I fell in love with the dark.

He put me in thrall when he took my blood.
I rewrote his heart when I found it waiting for me.
We need each other as much as we want each other.

To earn my freedom, I could master my magic and end the monster who made me fall for him, or defeat the most powerful monster of all.

My Review:

If you read my review of the first book then you already know that Deep Thrall got its hooks into me in a way I was not expecting. You already know about the oranges. And if you do not know about the oranges yet then please go read that review first because you need the full context before we dive into what the second book did to me. Consider that your only warning.

I went into this second installment already invested, already attached, already completely under the spell of this world and these characters. And C.D. Reiss did not waste a single second of that investment. This book is bigger and bolder and fuller than the first, packed with characters and growth and moments that made me stop and just sit with what I had just read. There is so much happening inside these pages and somehow it never feels overwhelming, it feels alive.

Let me talk about the characters for a moment because there are a lot of them in this one. A whole sprawling cast of people moving through this dark and dangerous world, each of them adding something to the story, each of them pulling the narrative in directions that kept me completely on my toes. And the growth. The character growth in this book is something I genuinely did not see coming in the best possible way. People change in this story. They evolve. They are shaped by everything that happens to them and you feel every single bit of that transformation as a reader.

Now I have to be honest about something. There were certain scenes in this book that gave me strong video game energy. You will know them when you hit them. There is a particular kind of choreographed chaos to some of the action sequences that made my brain go somewhere between a cutscene and a boss level, and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible. It was a little wild and a little over the top and I kind of loved it for being exactly that unapologetic about itself.

And then there are the oranges. Listen. I thought I was prepared. I thought that having been through the first book I had some kind of immunity built up, some emotional armor around the orange situation. I was wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. The oranges in this book hit just as hard and I will not say another word about it except that if you know, you know, and if you do not know yet then you have something extraordinary waiting for you.

Here is where I landed by the end of this book and I want to be very transparent about this. I would become a vampire. I am not even joking. I sat with this story and I thought about it genuinely and seriously and I arrived at the conclusion that there would be nothing stopping me. Nothing. The life these vampires lead, the power, the allure, the oranges, all of it. Sign me up. I am ready. Where do I go to make this happen.

Now about that ending. I am not sure if this is truly the final book in the series or if there is more coming, because the way it wrapped up left me with questions and feelings and a very specific kind of restless energy that I do not know what to do with. I need answers. I need more. I am choosing to remain cautiously hopeful that this world is not entirely finished with me yet.

One more thing and this is important. Get the audiobook. I cannot stress this enough. The male narrator's voice in this series is deep and throaty and absolutely perfect for this story in every possible way. It adds an entire additional layer to the atmosphere that the written page alone simply cannot replicate. It is worth every single second of your time and I would not steer you wrong on this.

If you are into the vampire mob world and you have not started this series yet, what are you waiting for? Pick up both books, get the audiobook versions, and prepare yourself for the oranges. You have been warned and also you have not been warned enough.