THE MADDEST OBSESSION (Made #2) by DANIELLE LORI

‘He wanted me, and he hated it. I was his own little game. If he touched me, he’d lose. I suddenly knew, this was a game I wanted to play with everything in me.’

The Maddest Obsession by Danielle Lori has without question become one of our most loved dark mafia/antihero romances we’ve read to date. It was outstanding, ticked all our book love boxes and is a favourite for 2021. Why? Well, where do we begin; character connection…we’ll get back to this later because bloody hell, a brilliant storyline, angst, sexual tension, and the passion, oh wow the passion!

“You want to know why I don’t touch you? Because if I did, I wouldn’t stop. Not until I’d snuffed out that pretty fire in your eyes.”

Cleverly woven into an emotional story about two complex characters, Danielle Lori also inserted comedic one liner’s which made us laugh out loud, intense softness which made us melt into puddles on the floor and moments of quirkiness which we found so addictive to the point that we were waiting for the next moment to appear.

‘His gaze met mine. Blue. Cool silk sheets beneath a darkening sky. Although, there was something else. A flicker of something bright and full of life. Like the reflection in a neurotic person’s eyes. It was madness. It was obsession.’

You know those books that literally swallow you whole and stays with you past every point when you reluctantly must put it down for you know…real life. Well, this is it. It felt like we were crawling at a snail’s pace through the inferno that was Christian and Gianna relishing the lick of flames and the cuts from the barbed wire of their internal turmoil and cat and mouse chase. And yet again it had humour, it had the most incredible vulnerability and the most enticing sexual tension we’ve come across in a while. This is a book we can read repeatedly for the power it wielded over our emotions and the intense character love affair that we had.

‘…if I didn’t stay busy, I was afraid I’d burn under the heat of my own fucking anger. I’d climbed my way out of hell, had seen it, tasted it, felt it, and the only thing that got me through had been dreaming about revenge and everything I would have on the other side.’

Christian Allister’s character is everything we crave in our book heroes; the love and thirst we have for the most perfectly imperfect anti-hero. He was brutal, cold, arrogant, sarcastic and trigger happy. He was so incredibly complicated, obsessive, and frustrating. He had an energy that scorched and lit up the pages. He was everything! He became our obsession!

“I’m going to ruin every part of your body for any other man, malyshka, and you’re going to thank me when I’m done.”

‘I was making a deal with the devil. And I couldn’t even find the grace to save myself.’

Gianna has without a doubt become one of our most loved heroines. She was written in an almost effortless way. We were intrigued by her as soon as we met her in The Sweetest Obsession, and we just knew she was going to be our kind of girl. Dramatic, confident in her own skin, switched on and sarcastic with a wicked sense of humour as well as an endearing vulnerability. We were not wrong about her, we loved her!

“You couldn’t survive me, Gianna. Nothing fragile ever does.”

Let’s chat about the character connection we mentioned earlier…. THIS IS HOW IT’S DONE! Danielle Lori, we’re giving you a standing ovation. You nailed it! As readers we need to not only experience but also feel how desperate or in this case, how obsessed even, a character is with another. We need to believe and become a part of this connection. This is the way you know the Author has ensured that the reader is utterly and completely immersed in the story with their mind, body, and soul. And when it happens, it’s utter book joy!

‘When you’re obsessed with something for so long and finally obtain it? It feels like coming home to God. And nobody gives up their fucking spot in Heaven.’

If you love any of the following: ruthless anti-heroes, dark romance, mafia romance, strong heroines with vulnerability, a lot of angst in your romance as well as slow burn which turns into a scorching inferno, then this is definitely for you, no hesitation! You’ll be reading late into the night, just as we did! Just have a fan or a glass of ice cubes at hand……just saying!

“You started this game,” he said, with the rough sound of anger. “Finish it.”