I did not expect to love this book as hard as I did.
I went in thinking dark romcom — vigilante brothers who hunt predators, a mafia princess who wants nothing to do with the life, forced proximity with a man who has absolutely no business being this attractive while committing felonies. And it IS funny. Genuinely, laugh-out-loud, tears-in-your-eyes funny. But underneath the humor is something with real teeth, and Hopewell never once lets the comedy undercut the emotional stakes.
Wes is the kind of MMC I will follow anywhere. He is meticulous, morally grey in the most compelling way, and so quietly devastated by his own feelings that watching him fall is like watching a controlled demolition in slow motion — everything precise and calculated until it's suddenly, catastrophically not. The way he cares for the FMC is unhinged and tender in equal measure. He will do objectively terrible things to keep her safe and then feel genuinely offended that she didn't protect herself better. His love language is surveillance and baked goods, and somehow that tracks.
Callie is the perfect match for him — not because she's fearless, but because she keeps choosing to stay even when her brain is screaming at her to run. She's spent years being invisible to the people who were supposed to see her, and Wes sees her with his entire body. Every tracker, every uninvited pie, every moment of fury when someone else touches her — it's the most intense attention she's ever received, and watching her fight against how much she wants it is agonizing in the best way.
Noah. Oh, Noah. The impulsive brother, the one who runs hot, the one everyone underestimates. He is so much sharper than he lets on, and the moments where his emotional intelligence cuts through the chaos are some of the best scenes in the book. He's getting his own story next and I am not ready.
The pacing is tight. The banter is *chef's kiss*. The spice is earned and woven into the emotional arc, never decorative. And there's a subplot involving competitive baking and an elderly woman that I cannot say more about except that it is one of the most delightful threads I've encountered in dark romance. Trust the pie. The pie matters.
This book made me laugh, made me clutch my chest, and made me genuinely sad when it was over. Five stars and I need book two immediately.
Tropes: stalker romance · vigilante MMC · forced proximity · captor/captive · morally grey · obsessive love · touch-her-and-die · he fell first · mafia adjacent · dark comedy · brothers dynamic
