I picked up a copy of Kira Stanley‘s Syndicate Princess as an Amazon freebie.
Being a vampire boss’s daughter was a lot of work. Being the only girl heir from the five families, I’ve always had to work harder, fight dirtier, care less. It made me into the woman I am today, causing fear in my enemies and a bloody trail for those who betray us.
Then my dad sprung on me that the other bosses and their sons were coming into town. That they wanted us heirs to all meet, to bond with each other.
To top it all off, my dad shocked the hell out of me by throwing out a challenge to the other heirs. Whoever could keep me in their possession, by force or choice, for twenty-four hours, would win the right for my hand in marriage.
The other bosses are all for it, wanting to get their man whoring, untamable, or workaholic sons to settle down finally, but I was not some prize to be won.
I was Rayla Desmond, a force all her own. A Syndicate princess that was not to be messed with, so these boys better be ready for me because I’m coming in for blood.
I really wanted to like this, but I just couldn’t. I get that it is probably intended to have a certain humor element, but it just felt over-the-top ridiculous to me. As in, I just kept thinking, “This is so stupid” the whole time I was reading it.
The fathers are caricatures. Rayla and her men are all supposed to be in the 27-28-year-old range (which I was initially happy about), but they literally act like children. But more importantly, they are treated like children. Considering there is relatively little actual sex in the book, I don’t see why Stanley didn’t just make them teens or new adults, at most, to match what she wrote. Plus, while I like a morally grey character, Rayla has the overblown emotional capacity of a toddler.
Other than the whole thing just being roll your eyes and cringe ridiculous, my main complaint is that the three men don’t come together until late into the book. This means that Rayla does everything three times. She escapes each man. She goes and sees each father. Then, she goes and does each challenge. Then she goes and seduces each man. (Then they talk about it all). Everything was done in triplicate, and I was bored.
Literally, the only things in the whole book I cared about were Cosmo and Lex, and neither of them gets much play here. But I’m not interested enough to read the next book to see how things work out. Plus, it could use a little more editing, both copy edits, and to catch the occasional consistency issue.
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