Dirty

Belle Aurora left us breathless and wanting to throw our kindles at her at the end of RAW (...or at least I did) I reread Raw earlier this year and was left with a big hole in my heart for the brutal honesty and beautiful pain that is Raw. If you haven't read Raw STOP RIGHT HERE and GO GET IT! You won't be sorry.
As soon as I started this book I had to stop and ask myself, “Who the f@@k is Alejandra?” Needless to say, I did not read the blurb like a normal human because I like to feel the story as it comes at me. However, I was really expecting more Twitch and Lexi...and there is some, but this book is all about (Ana) Alejandra (Castillo) Gambino and Julius Carter with a splash of Ling-Ling Nguyen.
Ana comes from a mob family that was looking to merge with an Italian mob family, so as the eldest daughter of Eduardo Castillo, she is arranged (Yes, I said arranged) to marry, Dino Gambino, the eldest son of Vito Gambino. She was the sweetest, most beautiful young lady and at the age of eighteen, she married Dino. He is such a loving gentleman, who dotes on Ana every chance he can. However, once they get married everything changes. When Ana doesn't fall in love with Dino as fast as he fell for her, he decides to beat the love into her. In Dino's mind submission is love and humiliation is punishment when Ana doesn't bend at his whim. He is cruel and sadistic and I could not turn the pages fast enough to see if he meets a brutal end.
When Raul, Ana's brother-in-law and ex-boyfriend, goes missing, Julius Carter and his assistant Ling-Ling Nguyen are called in as mob enforcers...this job has Julius as judge and executioner. However, after acting as a witness, Ana backstabs Julius by lying and making him look like a fool in front of his peers. His job then turns into him finding Ana and bringing her back to be judged.
Meanwhile, Twitch is going all over the United States to eliminate his obstacles that are keeping him from Lexi and his five year old son, AJ. Five years is way too long to go without those that you love more than yourself. Nothing will stop Twitch from achieving his goal, consequences be damned. I loved that this was weaved in to the Ana and Julius story because it kept me connected to all the characters even more.
Belle Aurora wrote this book so you know that this story will not unfold as you think it will. The more I got into this book, the more the webs spun together causing everyone and everything to connect in the craziest way. And then again, she left me NEEDING the next book in the worst way. I just hope that RAW: Rebirth will be just as crazy a ride as Dirty was. This is a Ride or Die kind of series and I am in it until the end. All three parts are out and on Kindle Unlimited so if you are a member pick this up and get pulled in like I did.

I had to sit and think a bit before I wrote this review. I've been waiting for this book for what feels like AGES. So you can imagine my excitement when I was offered an ARC. Dancing around the apartment may or may not have occurred.

Unfortunately, I didn't love this one...sigh. It was ALL over the place for me. There are two separate storylines that take place in it, and I found that the secondary one took away from Julius's and Alejandra's. Their story just never felt fleshed out enough for me to connect to them as a couple. We go from “I am going to kill you” to “I am going to keep you forever” in like the span of a day. Then we have Julius pulling a douche move of EPIC proportions that just comes out of left field. Umm BOUNCE seriously?? We also have a fourth POV (Ling) that AGAIN, in my opinion, took away from the main characters. Of course, that could be because I LOATHED her.



I almost feel like the author would have been better served to make the secondary storyline a novella heading into book three (yes there is going to be ANOTHER book) and gave the extra page space to fleshing out Julius's and Alejandra's story. Since the two storylines were connected by the thinnest of threads.

I also wasn't feeling the sex scenes in this one. First, there isn't really that much, to begin with, and the VERY few there were are lukewarm at best. It's been awhile since I read book one, but I seem to remember it having dirty hot sex scenes. So I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Oh good, they are going to have sex. THEN Julius says to Ana “I won't go down on you, or have sex with you bare because you have a douche of a husband who cheated on you and I'm not going to take the chance of catching something” (I'm paraphrasing) Realistic, I guess, not in ANY way, shape or form, sexy though.

Of course, this is just one person's opinion and you may LOVE every minute of this book. It wasn't a badly written book. And maybe I had my expectations set too high. I enjoyed it enough that I will be reading book three, since really, that is the book I have been waiting for since book one ended.