Promises & Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller (Monsters & Muses #1)

3.5 ⭐s!

Hello friends! Thank you for taking your time and coming here again. We have a new book review today, a book that I read months ago but never had the chance to write a solid review about. It is yet another re-telling of Hades & Persephone story and since we do know everything that can possibly happen, there may be a few spoilers, you have been warned.

It is not my first Hades & Persephone inspired (loosely, very loosely indeed, we only get characters mentioning their name in various situations here and there through the book but there are quite a few symbolic events that come up and though this doesn’t really make a book “re-telling” I enjoyed the events) book nor it is my first “mafia” romance, and I can say that this book is neither of them somehow.
Though it tried it to be.
I am in no way saying that the book does not have both of these concepts, it did, however, it wasn’t enough to the point where I can actually call this one a mafia romance because it didn’t have most of the characteristics of it. Again, this book is somewhere in between for me. A very nicely written dark romance with some mythology puns and “mafia” elements. It was filled with good steamy moments which we all love, and for that point, it was enough for me to read and finish it.

The book follows the daughter of a “not so powerful anymore” mafia leader and a doctor, who was also raised by these very annoying people. Their love is complicated and quite toxic, and the book promised me a lot at its beginning. I thought there would be some real family drama, which in the end proved itself to be wrong. The family is truly ruined, this is true to the very end, however thanks to our ominous male lead, things got solved pretty quickly. This is standalone so it is normal for things to get this quickly tied up I guess. There is a possible stalker, who likes to videotape our main characters while having some *ehem* fun, a mother who has some sort of past with this man and a father who only thinks about money, and two sisters who are no better than a vase in the house for the plot. The characters were so useless other than our leads, none of them made any sense to me. I genuinely thought that their absence would not change anything in the book, which is something sad to say regarding supporting characters because most of the time in a well-written book, these characters can change the entire story. This though wasn’t the case for this book. The characters had no depth whatsoever and no contribution to the story (other than the annoying mother). A good book actually requires this. No matter how small the things around these little characters are, the story always needs their help. And the absence of them is always obvious. It happened in this book too, though I knew that she had two sisters, and though I had seen them on many different occasions, their addition to the story was so little that nothing in the story was affected by them.

Our male lead is what you usually see in these dark romance books. “I get what I want when I want”, type of guy with real power. Though the author tried to make Kal look like the villain of the story until the last few pages, I enjoyed reading him, never thought of him as the villain. Elena on the other hand looked like the naive girl from a bad family, but she had some development throughout the book, which wasn’t enough to call her a decent character, but not bad either. I liked the chemistry between them, the steam somehow managed to overcome the absence of action.

That is not the only problem I’ve had with the story though.
I wanted to see some action. I wanted to see the mysterious tapes, her attack, and everything spiral up and up on every page and finally, reach the climax when everything falls down. This obviously, didn’t happen either. There was so much potential in this book my friends, there could be so many things however, none of them came to an understanding or at least “a climatic” end. Most of this story was built on the drama between Kal and the “mother”, and it too ended so quickly, it too made almost no sense and felt so rushed and finished in a few pages, and when it did, I thought to myself: “Was this the reason?”

Nevertheless, I did enjoy it and for the sake of the picture I’ve painted in my eyes, I really want to continue the series, I really want to read more about this non-fictional at all romance world the author created. Each book has its own story, and each book has mentions of mythology at one point or another, so what can happen right? 💁🏻‍♀️

I am sure I will finish the second book sometime this year, and if you like a book that is quick to read, give this one a try. It is not as disturbing or “scary” as other mafia romance books I’ve read, so if you like steam and some darkness in love, I suggest it. See you in my next post! ✨