Warning:
This review contains spoilers of book 1!
Would you die for the one you love?
Nixon Abandonato made his choice. And now he has to pay the price. Tracey is the love of his life, but being with him has made her a target of his family’s enemies. The only way to keep Trace alive is convince the world she means nothing to him.
Trace Rooks has fallen irrevocably in love with the son of her family’s sworn rival, and she knows in her bones nothing can tear them apart. Until Nix suddenly pushes her away and into the arms of his best friend… But Trace isn’t ready to give up on a future with Nix–and if he won’t fight for them, she will.
In the end, a sacrifice must be made. A life for a life. For what better way to cover a multitude of sins than with the blood of a sinner . . .
We discovered in book one of the Eagle Elite series, Elite, that Nixon Abandonato is the mafia boss of the most powerful mafia in Chicago. He’s only 21 but he is one badass mofo, let me tell ya. While he is a badass he and his friends, who are from other mafia families as well as his own, want peace. They want the families to be able to get along. This might be a tall order as there is nothing but strife between them at the moment.
Nixon and Trace are in love. We saw most of their love story in book one but here we get to see it x100. The problem with that is that Nixon’s cousin, best friend and Trace’s bodyguard, Chase, is completely in love with Trace as well. He doesn’t want to be but he can’t help himself and while he doesn’t want anything to come between him and Nixon it comes to the point where he’s only thinking about betrayal to be with the woman he loves. This is compounded by the fact that Nixon is more or less pushing them together thinking that Trace will be safer if she’s away from him as he has enemies. Probably not a good idea.
Trace loves both Nixon and Chase but each in different ways. She’s been pushed away from Nixon so often that while it feels wrong to be with Chase, but he’s very comforting for her. He’s a great friend. She doesn’t actually believe Chase when he tells her how he feels and believes that he’s just being charming and playing a part. That’s until a plan gets put into action to find a rat in the organization, find out who killed Trace’s parents when she was six and to take that person down. In order to do that Nixon has to put himself on the line and the outcome is devastating for everyone – people die, a rat is found, a man redeems himself…and that’s just part of the story.
I would love to go into great detail about this book but I just can’t without giving up huge spoilers and part of the power of the story is how it unfolds. Was I frustrated when we kept getting clues and not told what the hell the big secret was? Oh absolutely. I’m not a patient girl when it comes to stuff like that! lol But in the end the way it played out was completely satisfying and very well done.
The story is well written and done is such a way that we get many different points of view. It’s alternating 1st person POV’s between Nixon, Chase and Phoenix. I would have loved to have gotten Trace’s POV in this book as well (as we did in book 1) but that was not to be. Despite not having her POV I thought that the insight we received about what was happening from those three was wonderful. I really like Nixon so very much – much better than I did in the last book. Chase I didn’t like as much. I think it was because he was betraying Nixon and I thought Nixon and Trace were the better couple. He was a good guy though so I couldn’t outright hate him. Trace I liked much better in this book. The multiple bouts of crying she had in the last book went by the wayside and she learned to turn her tears into anger. You go girl. 🙂
The book had me, again, on the edge of my seat waiting to see what happened next with the plan, with the mafia, with Trace and Chase and Nixon – all of it. The intensity of the characters working together (or not), and how that will all turn out in the end, to be a real page turner. I really enjoyed the book and even the who love triangle thing which I normally will not read. This was worth all the nail biting in the end. I would never have thought that I would enjoy not only a love triangle but a story about the Mafioso. Who knew? I guess when it’s done as well as this one was it’s easy to love the books.
I definitely recommend this book and its predecessor. I can’t wait to read book 3 in the series too see what happens next with these awesome characters.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Rachel Van Dyken
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