Dark Obsession

Dark Obsession (Blackmore University #2)

by Cora Kent

𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 ⇝ ★★★.5

🦋 𝐅𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐐𝐮𝐨𝐭𝐞 🦋

“My uncle thinks he’s the king of the castle, but even castles fall when they’re under siege.”

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐓𝐨 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭 ↴

🥀 Warring Mafia Families

💣 “Who Do I Have To Hurt?”

🥀 Failed Arranged Marriage

💣 Homemade Spanking Film

🥀 Stepfather x Stepdaughter

𝐌𝐲 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 ↴

I’m a little upset that I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. I’m a fan of the stepfather x stepdaughter trope but maybe not when she’s freshly 18? Christine was a little much for me though, she was a little too naive in my opinion which ticked me off a lot. “My uncle would never hurt me” she says AFTER he smacked her across the face for not wanting to get married to a literal WOMAN BEATER! Like miss girl, please be serious. I don’t think I have hated a fictional family as much as I hated Christine’s family and no one can convince me that Sienna was not the person Giovani hired to follow Christine & Niccolo. This book was a little too much annoyance and not a lot of enjoyment. I seriously hope the third book makes up for this one…

𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 ↴

Graphic violence, torture of a side character, ptsd, dubious breeding consent

𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐲? ⇝ No

🫧 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐫 🫧

This is an Advanced Reader copy. Although this book was given to me as an ARC my thoughts are my own.

🫧 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 📖

There are some trigger warnings for this story, check them before reading.

Christine and Niccolo are stepdaughter/stepfather, as well a student/teacher. Initially their relationship is hot stolen moments with great chemistry and spicy scenes. However it's not long before they find themselves in love and Nic changes from an obsessed domineering stepfather to more of a devoted lover. This change came quite quickly, I would have liked a bit more of the taboo dynamic before the change in tone.

Both Christine and Nic come from mafia families but have limited involvement, until they couple up and Christine's family decide this is not a suitable match. Her uncle pledges her to marry a violent mafia man in order to gain favour for their family. After a violent incident involving this man and Christine and another realised threat to Nic's family, the story takes a turn with Nic joining his mafia family to go full “who did this to you” mode to seek revenge and extract Christine from this forced marriage. The latter half of the book focuses more on the mafia family dynamics and I enjoyed learning about Nic's brothers more.

Overall this was a great story with mildly dark romance elements and I look forward to reading more from this series. Note: I received a free copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review.