Undercover Chapters

Thank you NetGalley, Victory Editing NetGalley Co-Op, and Evie Rose for the Audio ARC in exchange for an honest review of the content.

In “Messages from the Mafia Boss”, the FMC Nina is accidentally added to a mafia group chat after her brother forces her to join an anonymous messaging service. Nina, with screen name “bunny the killer” was assumed to be an assassin and mistakenly added into the mafia group chat. But when mafia boss Blake sees a new name he doesn’t recognize in the chat, he decides to do some digging of his own and messages “Bunny” to see if she will complete a job for him.

After a bit of banter between Blake and Bunny, it becomes glaringly obvious that Bunny is by no means the killer she says she is, which only intrigues Blake more. But then, Bunny decides to ghost Blake so that she doesn’t put her brother in danger for his mistake. Just when she starts to believe it is over, gifts start to arrive for her – and who can say no to a gift from a mafia boss?

This book is a mafia rom-com, with some fun tropes like stalker, age gap, grumpy sunshine, virgin fmc, dubcon, bondage, praise, and more. 

Now, my review.. 

The positives: 

• The book was very funny, the banter between Nina and Blake was great, especially in their messages back and forth. 
• Narrators Shane East and Evelyn Rose did a great job bringing these characters to life. I would listen to both of these narrators again.
• The spicy scenes were very well done. Not every author can write a good mutual masturbation scene and this one was super hot. 
• The story itself was fun, and was easy to listen to. A fast paced, enjoyable read.

The negatives: 

• I’ve said it before and I will say it again – insta love. Honestly, the more times I read insta love the more I dislike it. I understand it is a short book so there is only so much that can be done through the time span, but I think I was extremely turned off by the fact that they had a few online conversations, met in person one time, and then they were suddenly in love and ready to have a baby together the first time they had sex. This just felt all very unrealistic to me and took me out of the story. 

Overall, I think I may not be the right audience for novellas done by Evie Rose. I wanted to try one more after “Accidently Marrying the Mafia Don”, but the insta love trope is such a buzz kill for me. I think she is a good writer, with fun stories and ideas, so I would be willing to try a full length novel from her that allows more story and build up. 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐