Okay, let's get the ugly out of the way first. Even though I really liked it, the book was far, far, faaaar from perfect.
Some issues I had with it include:
1) Did the author, or anyone for that matter, care to proofread the book? There were typos everywhere and even a couple of grammar mistakes.
2) The cursing became hilarious after the first dozen fucks and bitches and motherfuckers and every combination thereof. It became a turn off since you could no longer take their threats seriously because the word "fuck" came out of their mouths every two words or so.
3) My Italian is very basic so I can't really judge on more than the fact that even I noticed that some of the phrases were not actually correct. You'd think the author or editor would at least care to make sure the few foreign phrases used were actually right. Do not make characters bilingual or multilingual if you can't take the time to make sure even the most basic phrases are absolutely correct. Just... don't. Now, I don't know any Irish so I have no idea if there were any mistakes in there, I would bet there are though.
4) "Family is the most important thing". How many times was this brought up during the book? SEVERAL. SEVERAL TIMES I TELL YOU. Yet, with the exception of perhaps one character or two, everyone doesn't really show to give a damn about family. They all care about their spouses (technically family but not blood) more than their actual relatives. Liam went around threatening to kill pretty much everyone short of his own mother. Melody, well same goes, although I'm not sure she was actually raised in this mindset. Declan and Neal also seemed to only really care about their wives more than anyone else. Even Evelyn (THE MOTHER) was pretty much like "You can touch anyone you please BUT my husband. He's off limits." so she didn't care that much about her own children. What even??? Again, I wouldn't really care if they didn't bring up the importance of family so much. What a bunch of hypocrites.
So well, those were my main issues, and given all of that you'd be wondering why I gave the book four stars when I've slapped better written books with one or two stars.
The answer is simple. This book was extremely entertaining to me. While the typos did bother me, and the cursing had me rolling my eyes (and I didn't care for the sex scenes, which comprised A LOT of pages), I could not put it down. I know that for most mafia nerds the book had a lot of inconsistencies but I didn't really care. Yeah, it was unrealistical as hell, but so what? It might have bothered me more if it hadn't been so much fun to just go along with the crazy.
For a bunch of characters that I really didn't like (With the excepetion perhaps of Coraline and SOMETIMES Declan) they really managed to pull me into their story.
Melody was a bitch. There's really not much else to say about her. She was just unnecessarily mean to a lot of the characters. But you know what? It's been a while since I last read about a female character who truly dngaf. It was...sort of nice. (In a: "I-wish-I-never-meet-someone-like-you-in-my-life, you-colossal-bitch.")
I didn't care for Liam. For a while he was nothing more than your typical alpha male wannabe with daddy issues and a not so secret soft side. *yawns* But I didn't hate him either, and that went a long way.
Neal and Olivia were boring.
Evelyn and Sedric were kind of amusing. I liked them well enough.
Coraline. Oh my precious and sweet child. What are you even doing there? Coraline is honestly the only actually "good" person you'll find in the book.
Declan. He is my favorite male character in the book, although I did hate what he did and how he acted in some parts What's with his random and creepy crush on Melody? It seemed OOC for him tbh, I was reading Coraline and Declan at the same time and I did not understand how he could even THINK of being with Liam's wife. It just didn't make sense. And then he goes and tells her to her face? are you stupid? what happened to you, Declan? I thought it was absolutely unnecessary and only served for people to hate Melody even more. She's treated like there's no one more beautiful and sexy in the world and that is such bs. GTFO.
I think I've rambled on enough. I liked the book for the same reasons some people disliked it.
I enjoyed the violence, the gore, how unapologetically awful the main characters were, how they are not redeemed but instead they push at you to try and hate them, and then they make you wonder if there's something wrong with you as well because you are enjoying it so much.
It was different, it was refreshing, it was original. For once, the title of a book actually delivers. Most everyone in this book was just that, ruthless, and they didn't give a fuck.