Review: Sparrow – LJ Shen

Rating 4 Stars

TW: Contains graphic violence and adult situations.

What’s the book about?

Troy Brennan

Every southie in Boston knows that name. The son of a dead mobster. The heart throb with steel blue eyes. “The Fixer” who can make or break you in this city.

Oh, and my new husband.

Sparrow Raynes

That’s me. No one seemed to remember my name up until he barged into my life.
But then he caged me.
Kidnapped me.
And killed every chance I had to runaway from the place where we grew up.
Put simply, Troy Brennan clipped my wings.

I have dreams, big ones, but I doubt he’d ever let me chase them. I have no idea why he’d decided to take me as his wife. But I do know this: pissing off this man will not do me any good. At all.

My Review
Sparrow is my first, and certainly not my last, story by LJ Shen and I absolutely loved it. It has all the dark, grittiness that I adore about mafia stories, and yet still maintained the sweetness you’d expect from a romance.

It begins with the hero kidnapping and forcefully marrying the heroine for reasons he won’t tell her about; and as for the heroine, she’s not about to taking this lying down and fights him every step of the way. The hero is someone who never has anyone stand up to him and so he enjoys this verbal sparring between himself and his new bride. Of course being a romance, they eventually fall in love but the journey getting there has so many ups and downs, twists and turns.

I won’t lie… for the first half of this book, I actually hated the hero. He did some awful stuff that I struggled to forgive; however, that goes to show exactly how great of an author LJ Shen is. She turned my feelings around and by the end, I could see his and the heroine’s point-of-view. His actions mean he’ll never be my favourite hero BUT I certainly felt fonder towards him by the end and wished for nothing more than a happily ever after for him and Sparrow.

The villain was interesting. I won’t give away who it is but I definitely suspected fairly early in the story. I just couldn’t guess the exact details which made the big reveal thrilling.

LJ Shen is a fantastic author that crafted a wonderful tale. Her descriptions and dialogue were delightful and every mention of food (particularly the pancakes and hot chocolate) made me hungry! I would recommend this story to any reader who enjoys dark romance or mafia romance but be warned, readers should be 18 years or older as this story does contain graphic violence and adult situations.