*Review* Hexed by Emily McIntire

 Genre: Dark Romance

Published: November 5, 2024

Pages: 505

He's the prince of La Cosa Nostra. She's the witch who steals his heart.

From #1 New York Timesbestselling author Emily McIntire comes a dark and delicious fractured fairytale of The Little Mermaid.

Venesa Andersen has never been good. She wasn’t good enough for her parents, and she isn’t good enough for the gangster uncle who took her in after they died. But she’s cunning. Beautiful. Dutiful to her uncle’s demands. And she doesn’t have time for a moral compass, anyway. When her runaway cousin returns to their coastal southern town, she brings a man with her…and Venesa soon realizes he’s the only one who’s ever seen her for her.

There’s just one problem: she can never have him.

Enzo “Loverboy” Marino is a wealthy businessman by day and prince of the underworld by night. Underboss to a notorious mafia syndicate, he answers to no one except his father, the strongest don in the Northeast. When he’s tasked with marriage, Enzo doesn’t think twice.

Until he meets his fiancée’s cousin.

Venesa is everything he never knew he wanted, bewitching him with her sultry voice and supple curves. But Enzo learned long ago that for a man like him, life is better without the things you want.

When plans unravel and temptation sings its siren song, they’ll both have to choose what’s more important: duty to their families, or a forbidden love that was never supposed to be.

I listened to the audiobook version of this story through my library. This is my honest review. 

The Little Mermaid was one of my favorite Disney movies growing up, so I was excited to see how the story would get twisted. I'm not sure if I just listened to these books too close together or what, but I felt like this book just didn't deliver the way some of the previous books did. I still got the subtle references to the source material that are so common in this series, and the banter between the main characters had me anxious for them to just hook up already, but I didn't feel as invested in the story overall. 

One thing this book did really well was making the Ursula character a really sympathetic person. I was definitely cheering for her perseverance overall, because she just really seemed to deserve good things, even when her actions weren't always honorable. 

Overall I give Hexed 3.8494 out of 5 stars. - Katie 

Amazon

Emily McIntire is a #1 New York Times, and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author whose stories serve steam, slow burns, and seriously questionable morals. Her books have been translated in over a dozen languages, and span across several sub-genres within romance.

She's been featured on outlets such as Good Morning Chicago, and in Cosmopolitan.

A stage IV breast cancer thriver, you can find Emily enjoying free time with her family, getting lost in a good book, or redecorating her house depending on her mood.