2/5.

Angelo by Silvia Violet is a story of almost-second-chance-romance, enemies to lovers, and dubious consent from the get-go between the mafioso Angelo and the lawyer Cameron.

I did not enjoy this book. Part of this reason is not Violet's fault: I do not like second chance romance, I do not like enemies to lovers, and the dubious consent in this did not have dubious consent trigger warnings. You can look at my GR and see I read noncon and dubcon, so this issue is not that it exists, but the lack of content warnings for it. So, my personal issues with certain tropes aside, I do feel that some of it wasn't handled well.

Let's talk about enemies to lovers. The reason that Angelo hates Cam is because

Spoiler

Cam, when he was a fifteen year old, who had suffered a rough home life and bullying at school, did not let Angelo cheat off his math test and homework because he was a scholarship student and could get booted. When Angelo insisted he'd pay him to tutor him, he refused, calling his family out for being a dirty mafia who killed people. All of these things are true about Angelo's family, even if they didn't kill the person that had died recently.

. That is the reason this man, now 30, has hated someone. Twelve years and he didn't get over one comment. Meanwhile, he storms into Cameron's bakery and

Spoiler

demands he either fuck him and do everything he says or he'll take the bakery from him. The one piece that Cameron has left of his grandparents, by the way.

That is a pretty fucking justified reason to hate someone, in my opinion, but that dubious consent situation only came about because Angelo wanted revenge over the prior spoiler. What? Are you still sixteen? Get over yourself. You can't pretend like people aren't going to have opinions of you, because you do kill people.

So, I found the "enemies to lovers" part of this unrealistic when the power imbalance is completely fucked, the justification for 'revenge' is some shitty comment from high school, and it was made out that Cameron was the bad person in all of this. Several times, Cameron eventually apologizes and realizes he misunderstood some things from high school. There is very little comfort spared for all the trials and tribulations he was going through as a kid and furthermore, like his

Spoiler

homophobic mother who prayed over him to not be gay

that is never brought up. No, who gives a shit what Cameron was also struggling with, it is poor Angelo and his feelings because the boy he occasionally bullied didn't like him and his family for being known mafia criminals. What?

I don't know. It makes me angrier the more I think about it. Violet also once more leans into the kink here, which was hot. However, there is a lot of claims of "you don't want safewords, you just want me to control you" type shit, which. Hm. I'm not sure about that one, but it does pair up with dubious consent in this case I suppose. It's not that these men didn't eventually have tender moments, but the whole premise of this supposedly mutual hatred was asinine.

Finally, the editing. This book needs editing. Spelling errors, formatting issues, too many mis-typed quotation marks. I know Violet is a prolific author, and this book came out in 2020. It is not that old. What happened? Why are there so many issues here? It's a shame.