First I would like to say Thank you to Net Galley and Naya V for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I think I should start this off by saying I LOVED this story, I finished it in one sitting, so that should say a lot.
When I read the description of this story I was immediately intrigued. I love mafia romances as well as second chance romance and friends to lovers to enemies tropes. Asteria and Azriel's story had all the angst and banter one could have hoped for and I enjoyed every minute.

Now with all that being said, there were a few minor things that annoyed me. Mainly Asteria, she was way too naive for my liking and gave in to demands way too easily. There were times I thought well maybe she will start to grow a backbone and actually do something she wants instead of what others tell her to. Now don't get me wrong there was 1 situation she ended up actually doing something she wanted to do but that was the way towards the end. What I'm trying to say is I would have loved it if she actually stood her ground with Azriel when he decided to be a jerk, instead of letting him win all the time throughout the book instead of towards the end.

Overall I Loved this book and cannot wait for the sequel, and I don't know if I am the only one but I really want there to be a Francesca and Giovanni book in the future! ♥️

I enjoyed some parts of this book! While it was an easy read, there were minor things that I did not like.

Asteria is really naive but who can blame her? Growing up as a mafia princess in someways made her green. When Azriel, her one true love, leaves without a trace, Asteria is faced with devastation and heartbreak.

After a few years go by, Azriel is back and is a new person.

I personally didn’t like the inclusion of Hades and Persephone. I love the two, but in here it felt more like nicknames than a retelling- this can be improved. The 🌶 was just enough😮‍💨 I really liked this there’s just something missing that I cannot pinpoint.

In the beginning, readers are given a prologue to the background of Asteria’s & Azriel’s friendship, which I appreciated so much. There are many second chance romance type tropes where you aren’t given deep enough background information, so this was something I thoroughly enjoyed reading. It was friends to lovers in the prologue and first few chapters , and then shifted dramatically to tense, enemy vibes after Asteria and Azriel did their growing up apart from each other. The man that Asteria knew as a child is no longer there, and was replaced with a cold, brutal, and older version of Azriel that she is now destined to marry after 6 years of being apart from one another; really, I should say ghosted since Azriel left her in the middle of the night. However, circling back to what I said earlier, I do appreciate the fun, innocent snippets of the moments that Azriel and Asteria shared together when they were younger.

The character development of Asteria was amazing. She started to become more bold with her actions and language, which leads her to being depicted as a stubborn, “I’m sure as hell not holding my tongue” type of woman, which I love. I love when authors write the women characters as strong and bold archetypes, instead of meek and innocent. She seemed to break out of her gilded cage, which I really enjoyed watch happen throughout the course of the book. Azriel was a pain in my side throughout majority of the book through Asteria’s POV, but lessened when I read his POV.

What I really disliked was the miscommunication trope. It was prevalent throughout the entire book, and although I do think it did contribute to the suspense, I wasn’t a fan. It’s not something I enjoy in a book because it makes me annoyed or want to pull my hair out, but I get why the author decided to factor it in.

Overall, it’s been a great book and one of the better mafia romance books I’ve read, minus the few dislikes I had with the book. I would recommend it to a friend and advertise it to my audience, but would definitely warn them of the miscommunication and verbal harshness that Azriel exhibits since that isn’t particularly my cup of tea.

To me this was a 3.5 ⭐️ book. I loved the theme of Hades and Persephone throughout the book. I think I’m just not the biggest fan of mafia romances. The writing was good and the story line was good but I just couldn’t get over how Azriel treated Asteria. It just didn’t make sense to me why he treated her so poorly.

I also wasn’t the biggest fan of Asteria’s character. When the story started she was just a child but as the years go on in the book she just seemed to not grow out of that childish behavior. At one point in the book she knows if she does something other people will suffer from it and she does it anyway. The book did keep my attention and I enjoyed reading it, there were just things throughout the book that continued to bother me. This is a really short book so it didn’t take very much time at all to read through.

Thank you NetGalley and Naya V. For for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this book so much I literaly devoured it in a sitting couldn't put it down I was hooked from the first page thank you so much for giving me a copy can't wait to read more

This story has so much potential and I did enjoy it, but their are a few kinks I think the author should have ironed out before publishing. Overall, it’s a typical mafia romance with that beloved “friends to enemies to lovers” trope. Just from reading the blurb I was excited to dive in and did truly enjoy the experience.

Yet, that being said, it did have some pitfalls that were hard to get past. The story didn’t feel like it really took off until around 25% in, even though I did enjoy the setup for the main characters, it was dragged on a bit too long for my liking. That’s just my personal preference though.

Overall, the characters were interesting, but the female main felt a little flat. At times, she was incredibly childish (which was fine in the beginning because she WAS a child). She never seemed to grow out of that childishness though. The author used the characters inner monologue to tell us things we already assume just from the genre of the book, and the character rattles on and on. I found myself skimming over a lot of her internal thoughts because of this. Another issue with the female main character was the fact that she seemed to know information that was uncharacteristic for her (i.e. she technically/scholarly analyzed a painting in an art gallery without the reader having any idea that she knew anything about art in the first place). It pulled me out of the story enough that I was actually annoyed.

The reader is left stuck Asteria’s POV for the first 10 chapters. For a moment, I wondered why the chapters were labeled with her name. And then you get Azriel‘s POV, and it’s fantastic! His point of view is compelling and interesting and I wished we’d gotten more of him in the beginning. Yet, even with him their were issues. His motives were inconsistent and changed so suddenly that I wasn’t sure if I had missed something important along the way. It’s felt obvious that the characters emotional changes were forced and not naturally shifting — the entire relationship dynamic was rushed.

And the Hades and Persephone theme was not done all that well. The characters held onto that theme with a vice grip and it was sometimes really awkward.

Were there quite a few issues with this story? Yeah, sadly. But, I still enjoyed the overall idea and concept and would still read the next book. I’m invested, even if the storytelling wasn’t up to par with what I had hoped for.

(I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review.)

If you like the Hades and Persephone vibe + mafia romance + arrange marriage + second chance romance … then you might want to check this book out. You guys know I read everything inspired by Hades and Persephone story 🤭🖤

I have to start this with …. Ahhh why did it have to end with that cliffhanger????? 😩 I feel like I need to know what happens RIGHT NOW, so hopefully the sequel comes soon. The story of Azriel and Astory it’s a little slow at the beginning but keep going because it gets good! There is a lot of angst and tension between the characters, lots of drama and LOTS of spice.I found this book to be similar to Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller, so if you enjoyed that book you might also like this one ☝🏼

The book comes out September 27 and you can preorder it now 😊

Thank you to Netgalley and Naya Villareal for an e-arc of this book!

I was drawn to this book initially by its stunning cover, but then I read the book description and was completely SOLD!

Like…

• Dual POV
• Lovers to Enemies to Lovers
• Mafia Romance
• Hades and Persephone References
• Spice
• Arranged Marriage
• Cliffhanger Ending

Can’t really go wrong with any of that.

The beginning of the book has several time jumps involved starting when Asteria is 16, jumping a couple times until she is 22. While I don’t know that all the jumps were necessary, I did enjoy having a glimpse into how Asteria got to where she is at 22.

I am a sucker for the multiple POV, mafia, enemies to lovers tropes so the fact that this book had them all was *Chef’s Kiss*

This book was so easy to read. It took a while for me to get into (mostly because I was just reading it a bit at a time), but from 40% of the way onwards… I ate this book up. I read the rest of the book in one sitting.

CLIFFHANGER…. can't wait for book two!

Expected publication September 27, 2022

Some of my favourite quotes from the book:

“Look to the stars, cara mia. Every night you miss me, every night you don't see me, that's where I'll be. Always.”

“You can’t forget people like Asteria. They grow inside of you like a contagion. She made a home for herself inside of my heart years ago. For years, she was an essential part of me. She was the yin to my yang, the stars to my night sky, the air in my god damn lungs.”

A mafia book that starts off with two friends a girl and a boy who has grown up together and though they are from two different families they dream of being together. This all looks good until she is told they can not be together and even though they plan to run away he does not show up and she is told that his family is gone. She cannot believe that he left without any word. Now without any word, she is told to marry someone else. Though she does not want to she knows it is not up to her but to her father and she has no say. On the day of the wedding though her fiance is killed.
Now she is told that she is to marry someone else and that person is the boy who she grew up with who is now a man yet she does not know him, also from what she has heard he is now the devil and she is wondering why she is having to marry him. The devil is out to destroy her family and you the reader do not know why. This is the first book and more should be revealed in the second book which I hope so. This first book is dark but is a good beginning and I can’t wait for the second one. I do like the characters and the beginning really does get you into the story before it turns dark so you want to continue to read it to the end.

The Princess and the Devil by Naya V. is a dark, mafia romance. The book focuses on the characters Astoria and Azriel, as young people they fall helplessly in love but at that time it isn’t meant to be and one day Azriel disappears. We fast forward a few years and Astoria is sworn to another man who is part of the Italian mob. As a woman she isn’t allowed to make her own decisions and when her fiancé is killed, it opens up a series of events which sees Azriel coming back into her life. But he isn’t the boy she remembered, this man is harder, darker and seems to want to make Astoria pay for past sins of her fathers that she has no idea about.

Astoria and Azriel have a very difficult relationship. Astoria remembers what Azriel used to be like and is still trying to find the boy within the man, but Azriel doesn’t give her a lot back and at times can be really cruel to her. It is only when they start to get together that more of the truth comes out on where Azriel has been and what he has been up too. There are certainly dark elements to this book which highlight the violent world that both characters come from. There are also some references to their story being like Persephone and Hades which you definitely pick up on throughout the story. The dual perspectives gave me a sense of getting to know both characters more and understand where they were coming from, and this is definitely a slow burn romance so don’t expect things to be happening quickly.

The book does end on a cliff-hanger!

ARC received for a fair, honest and sometimes long review. All opinions are my own. 😊

More of my reviews can be found on my blog: http://thehotmesslibrary.blogspot.com

The Princess And The Devil
by Naya V.

This book was amazing! It ended in a cliffhanger and I can't wait to read the next book and find out what's going to happen next! I was not prepared to read another book with a cliffhanger, especially when I can't read the next book immediately, because I loved this! I loved every character, the female MC named Astoria is vegetarian like me so that was really close to me.
This book has Hades and Persephone references like there was a lot of time they referred Astoria like she is Persephone(wich actually was her middle name) and later in the book Azriel like Hades.
I personally think this book was too short but I know a lot of people will love it because of that.
I think I just really love slow burn romance especially with the enemies to lovers trope. This was definitely not a slow burn but I still really loved it!
I really recommend this book!

Also it reminded me of "The Book Of Azrael" by Amber Nicole but maybe it's just me, like I just keep thinking about that book and try to see every book like that.😄

✨enemies to lovers
✨mafia romance
✨arrange marriage
✨dual pov
✨cliffhanger

Release date: 27/09/2022

Thank you so much NetGally for this book in exchange for my honest review.

2.5 stars. This book was decent I definitely didn’t love it and I felt like some things were over explained which I do not like but some people do but I did really like the main female character Asteria and i definitely liked 1st person pov. Overall it was a good read and I would definitely read what happens next and recommend it.

Wow I will anxiously await the next book! The twist and turns had be on endge throughout this book! Azriel and Asteria have some serious history.and then were seperated. When they are brought back together again he is no longer the same person. Great read!!

Thank you NetGalley and Naya Villareal for an eARC!

*SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD*

I was immediately interested in reading this book based on the description alone. I love mafia romances and Hades and Persephone retellings, so both in one book? Sign me up.

I loved this book. I was hooked after the first chapter and devoured this book within two days. I have read a lot of dark romances, specifically in the mafia realm, and “The Princess and the Devil” is definitely one of my favorites.

I love a great mix of angst and romance. The MMC (Azriel) is definitely an anti-hero. For a large portion of the book, I was wondering how he was going to redeem himself and how the FMC (Asteria) was ever going to forgive him. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a bully-romance, however Azriel is not a nice guy for much of the book. One thing I found slightly frustrating was how quickly and easily Asteria forgave Azriel for his treatment towards her. Some of the things he said to her were incredibly cruel, and though she wasn’t particularly docile, she never really gave him any sh*t for how he initially treated her.

The spice was well written, the angst was delicious, and it had just the right amount of romantic/sweet scenes to balance it out. I was hooked from beginning to end, and I can’t wait to read the next book. Fair warning: the book does end on a cliffhanger.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it for any lover of dark romance. I can’t wait for the second book to come out.

This was a decent book. I got really annoyed at the beginning of the book with all the time skips. There were 2 one year time skips and then a four year time skip. I found the first 2 completely unnecessary and just annoying to the plot. Everything that happened at the beginning before the 4 year time skip could have happened together without the other time skips, in my opinion.

However, after all of that, the story got more interesting and I was actually able to enjoy it. I did really enjoy the lovers to enemies to lovers trope in this book. Getting to see Azriel's side to story was nice too as it gave me insight into his struggle of loving Asteria, but also being a mafia boss.

The ending!!!! What a cliffhanger! I have to read the next one just to see what happens.

Overall, it was a decent read, but I can't necessarily say that I would recommend it.

I loved this story. It was my first mafia romance and I can honestly say I’m hooked. My favorite part was definitely the Hades and Persephone spinoff.

The spice level in this book was perfect and I always love a feisty strong female character and I think she was portrayed beautifully in this book. I cannot wait to read more from Naya. I also like the writing style it wasn’t difficult or tedious to read where I had to put the book down multiple times. I pretty much read the book in one sitting loved every minute of it.

*Thank you Net Galley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. *

A mafia princess and the devil.

From childhood lovers to enemies, Azriel and Asteria are all consumed by each other. Azriel, is possessive and needs to protect her. Asteria is the typical mafia princess who leads with her heart.

For all mafia romance lovers, this one I could not put down.

I liked the characters in this story. They had a good chemistry and the storyline itself was entertaining to read. I did get a bit blogged down but thought it was still an interesting read.

I read this arc thanks to NetGalley, and it did not disappoint.

Asteria and Azriel have been through quite a ride since they were teenagers. Asteria is your typical naive mafia princess. At times I feel horrible for her because sh3 had no choice and was in a gilded cage. Other times I wanted to scream at her because she was just so naive and ridiculous. When your husband comes home covered in blood half the time I feel like that’s a good indication she is protected for a reason.
Azriel has been through hell. He’s no longer the sweet teenage boy she used to love. Honestly, he’s better. This man is so fine! Emotionally damaged, definite,y, but sexy as sin also. The spice is just right in my opinion. I am excited to see what comes next.

"It feels like he's the stars and I'm the moon, and together? We're the universe.We're infinite possibilities. We're that love that refuses to quit. The love that never stops.
We're always and forever."

Being a mafia princess comes with a cost. Asteria has been sheltered for her whole life. The only good thing is the boy she loves, but her father arranges marriage with someone else. That leaves Asteria devastated and heartbroken. Azriel goes to another city, but after six years he's back, completely changed.

Asteria is sassy, stubborn and kind. She is naive but can't blame her because the way she lived. Both her and Azriel annoyed me sometimes, but still liked them. There was definetely the chemistry between these two, no matter the years apart from each other. The book is an easy read and ends on a cliffhanger. Looking forward to the next one!
If you love the lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers, mafia romance, arranged marriage, Hades and Persephone retellings, you'll enjoy The Princess and The Devil!

Thank you to NetGalley for the arc!