Stolen Heir by Sophie Lark - A Book Review
Synopsis:
Nessa Griffin leads a lonely life. Too compassionate and gentle for the underworld business she grew up in, she fills no role in her family’s mafia empire, struggling to prove herself both at home and in her highly competitive ballet corps.
Mikolaj Wilk is the most vicious gangster in Chicago, and he’s hellbent on revenge. His adoptive father saved him from the streets of Warsaw only to die at the hands of the Griffins.
As part of his vengeance, Mikolaj abducts Nessa, holding her captive in his moldering gothic mansion. She might not deserve to pay for her family’s crimes, but in this world, the wolves eat the lambs no matter how gentle and innocent they may be.
But even as Mikolaj plots the destruction of everything the Griffins hold dear, he finds himself fixated on his captive, wanting this ballerina to dance only for him. Meanwhile, Nessa finds herself lost in the growing tension between her and her kidnapper, their twisted relationship building in new, terrifying ways.
He is the beast to her beauty-but can Nessa find the man inside before he gives into his hunger?
Genre: Dark Mafia Romance
Tropes:
- Mafia Romance
- Enemies to Lovers
- Slow Burn
- Age Gap
- Forbidden Romance
- Beauty and the Beast Retelling
Hitting my stride with completing the choices for my A-Z Reading Challenge, and letter S had to go to Stolen Heir by Sophie Lark.
I first was introduced to Sophie’s work after reading Brutal Prince for my letter B of the alphabetical series. I knew after reading that book that I needed to continue the series and reading books by her.
Stolen Heir follows Nessa Griffin, youngest of the Griffin children. After Nessa’s brother Callum killed mafia boss, “the butcher”, Mikolaj sets out a plan to seek revenge of kidnapping his younger sister.
When Nessa is driving, she is forced to pull over after her car breaks down. After being left stranded, a car comes to her rescue to help her, only they drug her and kidnap her.
When she awakes, she is Mikolaj’s house, where he plans to keep her, as punishment for Callum, before ultimately killing her.
After realising that Nessa is missing, the Griffin’s hunt high and low for signs of her, leading Mikolaj to be satisfied with his work so far.
Stolen Heir follows Nessa in her captivity and Mikolaj as he attempts to avoid her, whilst keeping her on lockdown.
As Nessa spends time in captivity, she befriends the maid, who she learns small amounts of Russian from. When overhearing conversations, she hears Mikolaj’s plan to kill her brother Callum, resulting in Nessa to plead her case for him not to.
Despite attempting to keep his distance, Mikolaj can’t stay away as he’s intrigued by the innocent Nessa, leading to tension to develop between them.
Initially, Mikolaj holds out against the temptation but as he spends more time with Nessa, his will begins to give, resulting in them to sleep with one another.
Following their night together, Mikolaj develops a new plan of marrying Nessa in exchange for joining forced with Nessa’s mafia family.
When Nessa returns home, the Griffin’s are relieved to know their daughter is safe, only this relief is short lived once Mikolaj reveals his plan to marry Nessa. Initially, they are against the marriage between the pair, but ultimately have no choice in the matter.
Another Sophie Lark book which I enjoyed and devoured! I found myself unable to put this down, constantly saying “one more chapter” until oops, it’s 3am and I’ve finished the whole book!
The whole story of this book gave me Beauty and the Beast vibes, that’s pretty much the only way I could sum it up. The beauty (Nessa) is captured and eventually wears down the beast (Mikolaj). The beauty ends up having a space for her hobbies, in Stolen Heir, instead of it being a library, it’s a dance studio. Then eventually the pair fall in love!
Even though I enjoyed this book, Brutal Prince still remains my favourite of the series so far. I felt like Stolen Heir was a nice little palette cleaner as it was short and sweet, just what I needed.
I love a slow burn romance that has tension building, but I always want the tension to be a bit longer with Sophie Lark’s books. I think in general, I could read 300+ more pages with Sophie’s books.
This was probably the spiciest book I’ve read in a while and THE ILLUSTRATIONS!!! 🥵. Hot and steamy, everyone say Thank you Sophie! Can we normalise adding illustrations into all books, please?
I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series and hope that they live up to Brutal Prince.
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Georgia
🌷
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