Tight, fast-paced prose, feeling very spare and stripped-down. ✔️ I think might be James's best-written book yet. It felt very individualistic and way more natural. ✔️ Speaking of - I like how all the relationships progressed at such different paces. The relationship with him is VERY fast-burn which I don't tend to like, but since the one with Cass is extremely slow-burn and the one with Zed hasn't even gotten off the ground yet, I could handle it. He's younger than Hades, and provides a good counterpoint to Cass who's so much older. This isn't really explored too much here in book one, but I'd definitely like to see it go further. Simultaneously, she acknowledges that sometimes having all that control is too much for her, and the bedroom is one place she'd like to be dominated.

All the heroes kind of tiptoe around her, because she's even more alpha than they are and they know it. Her single-minded commitment to her duty, the way she never loses her brain, and how she handles men who screw up. She's the reason the book gets 3 stars and not 4. This is one of the very few books I've read where the author tells me that the heroine is a bad bitch, and I actually believe it 100%. Hades has got to juggle these three men while running her criminal empire, looking after her headstrong younger sister Persephone, and dealing with the fact that a man she killed years ago is apparently back and wants revenge. Also hovering is her best friend Zayden 'Zed' de Rosa, her second-in-command, who's always been a manwhore but is now acting weirdly. But she ends up having a one-night-stand with him to get Cass out of her system, only they can't stay away from each other, so one night turns into many. She knows he's younger than her, an innocent, and a soon-to-be stripper employee at the club. When she's turned down by rival gang leader Cass because he thinks he's too old for her, at 34, she ends up drinking alone in one of the clubs she owns.Įnter Lucas Wilder. Unfortunately, even gang leaders are prone to embarrassing crushes. She masterminded a massacre years ago that killed most of the other gangsters in the area (I think, the book gets confusing at times). But whatever, let's dive in.Ģ3-year-old Hades (birth name Hayden, fake name Daria) is the most powerful, vicious, and feared gang leader in the area. Also, I want to add here that you never meet Hades in MK's series, so the cliffhanger at the end where Madison reacts with shock at the identity revelation is extra mean. Yes, heroine - not a spoiler, you find out pretty much on page 1 that she's the woman on the cover, even though the MK series led you to believe she was male. Hades is probably the most genuinely badass heroine I've encountered in a while. ⤅ THIS is the heroine I wanted Madison Kate to be.

7th circle by tate james