Cole by Tijan

I shouldn’t have remembered him.
He was just a guy who walked through a restaurant. I didn't know his name. We never made eye contact. There was no connection between us at all.
But I could feel him.
The tingle down my spine. The command in his presence. The snap of tension in the air around him. That was the first time I saw him, and I was captivated.
The second time was different.
He was in the mysterious back elevator of my apartment building. Our eyes met for a fleeting second before the doors closed, and I was staggered. My breath was robbed. My senses on high alert. My body hummed.
That was just the beginning.
He was the leader of the mafia. I was about to fall in love with him, and his name…
Cole Mauricio

First, I want to just squeal thank you to Rachael for unconsciously recommending this to me.

I was casually stalking Rachael’s goodreads looking for something steamy but different to read when I stumbled across Cole. I’m going to be honest here. I have almost NO positive experience with mafia stories. I think I’ve read one that I completely LOVED but that was it. But Rachael said she loved this one so I went in with modest expectations. And at first that’s what I got. Nothing amazing. Nothing terrible. Just a modest mafia romance story…..minus the mafia. Then things started coming together. Things started to happen. And best of all SHIT HIT THE FAN.

I don’t know when in the book I went from “hmm this is enjoyable” to “OH MY GOD I FUCKING KNEW IT”. I also don’t know when I went from disliking Addison (I have a hard time with being empathic ok!?) to seeing her as Cole’s ride or die bae.

Speaking of Cole….all the stars to him. For one I empathized with him immediately. Even though he was the big bad, unapologetic mobster I recognized that he took that reality and still lived. He knew he wasn’t a A+ citizen. He was upfront and realistic about who he was with Addison and himself and I fucking loved that! I’m so tired of “bad” guys who just want to be a “good” guy at heart. No. You are who you are and you can either live with that shit or go crawl under a rock.

(can you tell that’s a pet peeve of mine? lol)

But I’m getting off track! Besides Cole and Addison (supporting characters were A+ too but I have no energy to go into them) the plot was solid! It had a slow build, and a few obvious twisty bits but overall it was great. You came to expect certain things to happen considering who the characters were but everything was handled in a way that didn’t make the plot tedious or too predictable. I haven’t decided if I’m going to pick up more things by Tijan but I will totally be taking all the recs possible from Rachael.