This is my first Sophie Lark book and I didn’t really know what to expect. I’ve always heard great things, but honestly read it because I was also drawn to the cover and to be honest this one didn’t disappoint! I loved the enemies to lovers and trying to solve the mystery, but it also had great spice. Would definitely recommend!

Broken Vow by Sophie Lark is a beautiful book. This is my 3rd book from Sophie Lark and I absolutely love this series.

This book is perfect for a bodyguard romance fan. Raylan's background as a rancher, soldier and southern boy really attract me to the book. But then he become Riona's bodyguard, damnnnn that's hot.

This book got a little bit of enemy to lover, high sexual tension, plenty of spicy scenes, action packed, suspense, angst, plot twist, betrayal and thriller. Since the book is tells about Riona's attack by a hitman, the book got well written action scenes which brings your imagination to another level. The author also enhanced your imagination with a playlist to be play during certain scene. And my favorite part of the book are the graphics.

I'll definitely be looking forward towards Sophie Lark and the next book.

Overall I think that the story was good and entertaining! It was a little fast paced and I would have better enjoyed more time with Riona and Raylan to see their relationship develop more. But I'm just a sucker for slow burn.

Although this is a part of a series, I read it as a standalone because the tropes in the other books didn’t interest me. I found I was able to read it as a standalone and was not confused.

Tropes:
-mafia
-bodyguard
-cowboy
-forced proximity
-hate to love

When Riona escapes an attempted hit on her, her family insists she gets a bodyguard. Raylan is an ex military, cowboy from Tennessee whose job is to keeping her safe. At first, Riona can’t stand him, but when a second attempt on her life endangers them both, they end up going to stay on his family ranch in Tennessee. As they are forced to be around each other, Riona begins to change her tune.

My review:

I thought I was going to love this. All of those tropes just speak to me! I did like parts of it but overall it was just okay for me.

I found the switch from her hating him to having sex with him very abrupt. I wanted more pining and build up to them getting together. Honestly, parts of when they were at his ranch got downright boring. I did really like the beginning before they were together, and I found the end pretty exciting. So for those reasons I’m giving it 3/5 stars.

This book is pretty good, not anything over the top amazing or special. I enjoyed the dynamic between the two MCs and this cowboy man who wants to protect his lady at all costs.

I am a bit torn about this book. On the one hand, I liked its thriller line (someone is trying to kill the main female character, yet nobody knows who hired the killer and most importantly WHY), and the action scenes were very well written. I also liked that the relationship in this book is between a bodyguard/ former military/ good-natured country boy and the ruthless lawyer/ haughty mafia princess, he is protecting.
On the other hand, I disliked the dynamics of the relationship between them. At the beginning it was great, the animosity from her side, snarky dialogues, his imperturbable composure - perfection. But then it went downhill. The build-up, leading to mutual desire, was weak, more telling than showing. And maybe it is my peeve pet, but I just hate it when men know better what women want. And why must a smart, capable, self-confident heroine be shown what she really wants from her life by a man? Or why must a bossy woman be craving to be dominated in bed? All in all, it was a fun, quick read, I just wish I liked it more. 2.5/5

Thanks to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Bloom Books for the eARC.

I went into this without having read any of the previous books in this series. I didn't have too much trouble without background information but I feel like I would have more connection with the characters if I met them previously as intended. The FMC was the prickly one, but Sophie Lark did a great job with in-depth characterizations for both the FMC and MMC. I found this to be enjoyable and I do want to read the rest of the series.

I loved loved loved Riona's and Raylan's storyline. It was the perfect mix of a got mystery/mafia storyline and a romance story. Riona is such a bad bitch and Raylan is such a sucker for her and the whole book was just so fun to read. This might be my favorite of the series.

Thanks netgalley and the publisher for the advanced readers copy of this book!

I went into this one without having read the previous four in the series- there are obviously other couples that have already gotten together that the author has to catch you up on, but it really did read as a stand alone book. I will say that the other storylines in the books sounded bonkers. telenovela level drama.
I haven’t actually read a mafia romance before- I wasn’t expecting it to be just an obvious, no big deal thing that her family runs the mafia. I thought that would be a bigger plot point, but it wasn’t and that was fine for me! just a surprise.

I liked this book and it was a quick read. I was along for the ride on this one, I wasn’t blown away with the characters chemistry but I was here for it at the same time. It was remarkable but it was enjoyable! The suspense wasn’t too stressful, or too much, just the perfect goldilocks amount. There was a “twist” for who the culprit is- but I saw it coming. Which in a way is good (yay! all of those british masterpiece mysteries are paying off!) because it’s not stressful to read, but in another way is kind of meh, because I feel like the characters also should’ve been able to figure that out.

Steam level 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥😳😳
Stars: 3.5

I went into Broken Vow not realizing that it was part of a series. It was first published in 2020 and I stumbled upon it on NetGalley and I'm so glad that I did. Broken Vow is part of the Brutal Birthright series (book 5). It isn't necessary to have read the first four in the series to be able to get into this one. It stands well enough on its own, but if you are like me, you'll probably want to dive into the rest of the series as well.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title.

I hate when there is no build up. The author just casually threw in “oh yeah my family is the Irish mafia” in the first few pages and I could not put this book down (figuratively) fast enough.

Arc review
Riona and Rayland
She the grumpy He the sunshine
Bodyguard He fall first
Riona life has been threats by an unknown person after being attack. She the middle child, a workaholic lawyer who handles contracts and family businesses for the Griffins and the Gallos. Dante Gallo gets her the perfect bodyguard his former army partner Raylan Boone . Raylan had already seen Riona.
He is amaze by beauty her strength and bossy attitude that he couldn't get out of his head. As he tries to keep her safe and spends every day together, the attraction grows and Raylan will do everything possible to keep her safe and stop the hitman.
The most shocking twist that you won't see coming because someone to her betrayed her and her family.

A solid addition to the Brutal Birthright Series 💕

Characters: 🖤🖤🖤🖤
Spice: 🖤🖤🖤
Plot: 🖤🖤🖤🖤
Pacing: 🖤🖤
Ending: 🖤🖤🖤

The pacing of this book was a little slow (in my opinion). Maybe I’m just impatient, but it took me some time before I actually felt connected to the storyline. I did enjoy the story overall and loved the dynamic between Riona and Raylan. The ending was a little expected but I liked how everything got wrapped up. All in all, I enjoyed the book and am looking forward to reading Heavy Crown.

Huge thank you to NetGalley and Bloom for the ARC.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

I’m have been living under a rock. This is my first Sophie Lark book, and I am obsessed!!! This was SO GOOD!!!

Riona is a very ambitious lawyer trying to make partner at her family's law firm. She is attacked at her building and they discover a hitman has been ordered to kill her. Her family’s mafia connections may have something to do with it.
Raylan is hired by her brother to be her bodyguard. He is ex military, but also a country boy at heart. Riona once nothing to do with him, but he is determined to make Riona his!

I am in love with these characters. Riona was just unapologetically who she was, and I absolutely adored that! What a strong female character!
Raylan with his sweet alpha heart (but dirty mouth), made me fall in love with him too!
Raylan challenged her, and that was one of my favorite things about the relationship.

This was such a perfectly written bodyguard romance,with a reverse grumpy/sunshine.
This book couldn’t have been better and I am officially obsessed! Now excuse me while I go and read the rest of the brutal birthright series!

📘: Broken Vow by Sophie Lark
🗓️: December 19, 2023

Thank you to NetGalley, Sophie Lark, and Sourcebooks Bloom Books for this ARC!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

*Reviewed on NetGalley and Goodreads.

Oh man. Sophie Lark and cowboys??? Sign. Me. Up. This absolutely has been my favorite of the series! Such perfection.

The tension and chemistry between these characters was truly off the charts and so damn amazing. Both the plot and the romance had the perfect ratios in this book; I never felt like it was “uneven” in any way. Sophie also just writes such incredible action/suspense scenes and this was another book that had her incredible and unique writing style.

I just had such an intense amount of love for Raylan… like this was a MAN. I definitely had been anticipating this book for a while going into this series and it was totally a huge hit with me. Love love LOVED this one!

*Thank you Bloom Books and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.*

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Trigger warning: abusive relationship (controlling, manipulative, physical, humiliation), and dubious consent.

Oh boy, I went into this book expecting to have a chill fun time, I did not at all anticipate from the description to walk into a disgustingly abusive relationship with a horrible male protagonist, who, by the narrative of the story, is portrayed as morally correct and good for our heroine.

But before I get to that, here are my notes as I was reading the story:

The description sounded interesting to me, and I wanted to have a chill time with a tropey romance fiction novel, but I don't think I vibed with this one.

Immediately the book starts off in the writing style it will maintain throughout the entire book--first person present tense, talking directly to the reader, explaining everything with a light amount of detail to get the gist, including information they shouldn't have access to, with almost no 'visuals'. This was definitely the most "tell not show" book I think I've ever read. I tried to work through it and be as forgiving as possible while reading it, since it's an arc and I wanted to give it a chance, and the concept of the story was still one I was interested in seeing play out, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a distraction for the characters to constantly lean against the fourth wall while I had little to nothing to picture in my head.

(after brief introduction between male lead + MC's uncle)
"I can tell Riona hates this even more--being talked about in the third person and being entrusted to me like a package. She must care about her uncle because only that could keep her from firing off a sharp retort."

"I don't think she particularly likes telling me this bit of messy family history, but Riona has a kind of brutal honesty. An interesting characteristic for a lawyer. I always thought of attorneys as silver-tongued devils who would try to convince you that black is white and wrong is right.
Riona is the opposite--she seems determined to state things exactly as they are and damn the consequences. Or other people's feelings."

"I can see why Riona picked this condo--it's a lot like her corner office. High and lonely, with a stunning view. I can tell she likes things that are aesthetically stark and completely within her control."

These are just a couple examples I thought to grab after several chapters of this style, where just after the two MCs meet, basically knowing absolutely nothing about each other, the male MC has all these (correct) assumptions with no historical evidence or visuals to back up those assumptions. (The MC does the same thing.) There are a lot of "seems" or "I can tell/I know" without saying why their thoughts are going that direction. It's most like it's just a way to convey characteristics and information to the reader more than these characters actually understanding and relating to each other, which is why it felt 'fourth wall leaning' to me.

As an aside, as an artist myself, it was really neat to see character artworks and scenes illustrated and sprinkled throughout the book. I love the intersection of the two mediums/crafts, and I super appreciated the author supporting human-made art and incorporating that into their book. I think it was a neat touch to see.

There's a LOT of skipping where the two MCs are bonding but we're, again, not shown it. Instead we get things like, "We've gotten in the car and we're back at my place before I realize it. Raylan is telling me stories about the ranch. He's easy to talk to and even easier to listen to." Which could be otherwise okay, if we were given instances of seeing that prior to a summarized description.

I wasn't overly fond of him kissing her without consent, AFTER she tells him not to. And while he does chastise himself for it later and promise not to do it again, he proceeds to break any trust with me as a reader the moment he decides he wants to enslave our heroine. The book VERY quickly took a turn into abusive territory with no warning. This guy, up until this point, while not ideal, and definitely dickish, appeared to understand consent and boundaries. Well, not anymore.

"I knew from the second I met [her now ex-boyfriend] that he isn't the right man for her. He doesn't have the fraction of the strength it takes to tame a woman like Riona. To grab hold of her and force her to respect you.
Riona's a fighter. She's driven to lock horns with any man who tries to assert his power over her. She won't be taken gently."

When Riona recognizes his behavior, correctly, as harmful and hurtful for her, she points it out to him. Saying she doesn't want to be 'broken in like a horse', and basically says she wants to be treated as an equal partner. Raylan dismisses her concerns and boundaries, saying she has no idea what she's talking about (as he proceeds to describe how you 'break' a horse, in the EXACT same way as she describes how he's trying to 'break' her, which was mind-blowing to me, as the author was clearly trying to differentiate the two manipulative and controlling behaviors, with the hero being righteous and morally correct, and the heroine as stupid and not knowing what she wants).

Then the dubious consent scene happens, with Raylan starting it saying, "I want you to give yourself to me. I want you to do exactly what I say. And if you don't love every fucking minute of it...I'll leave you along for good. I'll never bother you again. Do you agree?" To which she seems to fearfully and hesitantly agree, and since we are reading this part from Raylan's perspective, we can't know with certainty how genuinely she is okay with it, including times of protest, where he immediately shuts her down. He then ties her up, and this turns into a dangerously unhealthy* example of BDSM, which she DID NOT clearly consent to, which included a form of punishment, where he hits her if she doesn't do as he says/wants. Holy fuck.

*Mentally unhealthy. He does tie her up, but in a very vanilla way, so physically she was fine. But an unprompted scene (especially with physical hitting or whip cracking) with no real prep or aftercare can do a lot of damage to the psyche. And sorry, that's just not hot to me.

It's also painted as 'doing this for her', as if Raylan is the genuine hero who is finally letting Riona shine and be free. When it's insanely obvious it's for his own selfish desires. It's justified as a good thing in the writing, he's made out to be correct and morally right in the narrative.

"But I don't have to ask if she enjoyed it. I know what Riona needs."

I honestly had to skim that entire section. It was so disgusting. I would never have gotten this book if I had known this was in the abuse-kink sub-genre. I know it's popular with straight women, but I wish this was made more explicit in the descriptions of the book. (I've been seeing more authors adding in warnings or mentions of it, which I super appreciate!) If abuse-kink is your thing, go for it, but good lord make it clear that's what you're delivering, because I absolutely do not want to read that. It honestly felt like I was reading a rape scene to me. There was /some/ consent, but the whole thing was so questionable, I just have no words. (It's also hard to tell if this was genuine abuse-kink, or just the typical abusive relationships found in the romance genre aimed at straight women. So for a lot of readers who are straight women, because it's such a trope of the genre, this may read as perfectly acceptable to them. Idk.)

"It's paradoxical because I would have thought I'd /hate/ to be treated like that. I fucking hate being restrained, controlled, or bossed around. But not by Raylan..."

Yes, super healthy, safe, and legit way to find out your kink is being a sub. Good lord.

"Raylan is a good man. He's been good to me. He's protected me. He brought me to his own home to keep me safe. I look up into his face, and I /do/ feel safe. I feel cared for."

Again, if abuse-kink is what your book is about as an author, PLEASE be up-front about that. I'm really skimming now, just to not hard-stop DNF the book, as I did get it for free in exchange for an honest review, but if I was reading it on my own, I 100% would've stopped at that sex scene. No matter how hard the author tries to justify the behavior, try to paint Raylan as the 'good guy', making him out to be tender and loving, you cannot erase that abuse. (Which is wild, because Raylan's mom was written as a character who had an abusive relationship described with a lot of overlap with Raylan's behavior, but that was written as BAD, whereas Raylan's behavior is written as GOOD. It's the SAME behavior.)

I did see another reviewer point out the lack of mafia, which does get very obvious after the entire build up of her family (again, through telling and zero showing). It didn't really bother me all that much, apart from having read all the info on her family, and having no pay-off/value from it. Mentioning it here in case anyone is looking for a mafia-esque book, because this wouldn't be the one for you.

The reveal at the end wasn't a surprise, but it did make me feel disappointed that this book spent more time on the ranch instead of on the mystery. A lot of time was spent on sex (and abuse) and Raylan's father's backstory that I felt could've been spent on the actual plot. Raylan's family history could've been sprinkled throughout, rather than info-dumped all at once, (twice), which really messed with the pacing.

I was going to give this book 2/5 stars, as I did find the overall story in general interesting (though again, would've preferred more time spent with the mystery), and I did want to know what was going to happen, but the bulk of the book ends up being over-run with the abuse and irrelevant stuff, that it's a 1/5 star for me. I really couldn't get a handle on the tell vs show either.

Honestly, this book was a good reminder for me to stop reading straight romance written by and for straight women. So much of it is abuse-kink or normalizes abusive behavior as sexy. And I am just not into that. 🙅‍♀️

Broken Vow is the story of how Riona finds love. She is so driven to succeed and prove to everyone that she is the best at everything she does. When danger chases her she needs a protector. Raylan isn't looking for a relationship, but Riona is irresistible to him. They have to work together to protect her. Can the cocky cowboy win her heart?

The author does a nice job giving Riona depth. In the prior stories she was just a stick up the ***t lawyer always trying to prove herself. She was cold and untouchable. Through the course of this story, she opens up and learns to live. I really enjoyed how she learned to trust Raylan. The bad guy was scary, but she always dealt with what was happening by staying calm and dealing with the situation. Raylan was introduced in a prior story, but he was just a side character. In this story he develops into a multidimensional character with a family and his own issues. I really enjoyed the choices the author made about locations and side characters. I am not going to give it away, but I didn't expect it. Some of the characters from the prior stories make appearances but this story is really focused on Riona and Raylan.

Where I thought the story was weak was that I figured out the bad guy pretty early on and the conclusion of that part of the story was kind of a letdown. I figured Riona would get a huge bad guy conclusion, but it was almost a footnote.

This is a contemporary romance set in some places. Again, not going to give it away. Riona and Raylan are two adult characters with complicated backgrounds. They take the time to get to know each other while developing a relationship. I think you can read this book as a standalone but some of the side characters have Riona in their stories so reading them all will make this story more complete. I will definitely read more from this author.

She nailed it out of the park once again with this book! Sophie is one of my favorite authors, and I was so excited to be able to read this. It was phenomenal! The twists, the spice, and just the plot had me hooked. I read through this in two days, unable to put it down!

I absolutely love this series! Not to mention, the covers and the art inside are so gorgeous that I’ll proudly display on my shelves. If you’re looking for a fun mafia romance, you won’t regret starting this journey.

For some reason i had no idea this was number FIVE in this series like. this was the first one i read but i liked it a lot! a little cringey in some areas but i find you can’t have a mafia book without that. It was so entertaining and had cute moments i’d probably give a 3.75 rounded up