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| Only just this minute realised that the ‘r’ in Mistress is actually a gun. |
Despite my professed preference for All Things Historical, I can get as giddily as excited by a modern day romance as the next spanko. I absolutely loved and adored Renee Rose’s The Bossman which is a modern-day romance about falling in love with a mobster.
In fact I loved it so much, that when I was briefly considering a career in book plagiarism, The Bossman was the book I started with because as I said at the time, “it’s brilliant and sexy and far better than anything I could write. And if I am going to embark on a new life of criminality I want to be doing it for the right reasons – bitterness and jealousy.”
When I reviewed The Bossman for Spanking Romance Reviews, I finished off by saying that I didn’t want Renee to write a sequel. “Not because I don’t want to spend any more time with Sophie and Joey – far from it. I just don’t want them to have any more drama in their lives. They’ve had enough excitement. I am happy to leave them to the quiet uneventful life that they both crave.”
Luckily Renee has found a way to write a sequel while still keeping me happy (and I assume that my continued happiness is the primary motivating factor behind Renee’s writing career) by returning to the sexy Mafia world while leaving Sophie and Joey very firmly in the background enjoying marital bliss and the pleasures of parenthood.
Mob Mistress focuses on Joey’s cousin, Bobby Manghini, an accountant working at the slightly more legitimate end of “The Family”‘s business dealings. He’s in the market for a new mistress and when his path crosses with Lexi, a down-on-her-luck hairdresser on the receiving end of string of financial misfortunes – he wants to persuade her that he would be excellent Sugar Daddy material.
Despite the fact that Lexi only agrees to his proposal because she is up to her eyeballs in medical bills, debts and overdue rent, there is a fairly lovely and believable rapport between the two of them from their very first meeting. It is on the face of it, an utterly cold-blooded and mercenary arrangement. “Here’s the deal.” says Bobby, early on. “You make yourself available to me. If you’re not working at the hair salon, your time is mine. You don’t have to sit around and wait for me—I’ll text you in advance, but you don’t tell me you’re busy, got it? If you have plans, you change them.”
It’s hard to believe that such an arrangement – with a member of the bloody Mafia, no less – could result in such a sweet and romantic storyline. But you know Renee Rose. “Sweet and Romantic” is her middle name.
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| In fact, I am going to assume that is literally true from now on |
Lexi believes that Bobby is married mainly because he doesn’t give her any reason to think otherwise. He’s actually divorced but likes to keep all the sections of his life neatly compartmentalised. Which is why he likes to keep his mistresses tucked away tidily and out of sight until he wants to play.
And he really does love to play. The sex is fantastically written. There is one standing-up-against-the-wall sex scene early on in the story that got me terribly excited. Renee has a knack of describing such scenes in a way that makes it oh-so-easy to visualise.
And then there are the spankings. Of course there are. Bobby Manghini is very fond of spanking. Mostly the spankings are the fun, sexy type but there is also a wonderfully disciplinary spanking with a belt which Bobby administers after Lexi crosses a line in Bobby’s neatly compartmentalised life. That’s a very distracting scene, that one. In fact it caused me to miss my tube stop when I read it. You try giving that as an excuse for why you’re late to work. (There are all kinds of disadvantages to reading Renee’s books on trains, mind you. Lack of privacy for one thing.)
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| Not the most conducive of environments for engaging in a spot of self-love. |
I probably enjoyed Mob Mistress even more than The Bossman. It’s a close run thing, though. I’d rather not choose between those two mafia boys. They’re both utterly delightful. How on earth does Renee Rose manage to write such engagingly lovely characters when they are both involved in the seedy world of underground crime? I should dislike both these people intensely. Instead I’d rather like to hang out with them. Particularly if said ‘hanging out’ involved a trip over one or other their laps.
I have no idea how Renee does it. It’s probably witchcraft. I’m incredibly glad that she does, though. I hope there are more spanky mobsters to come! They’re just so terribly good at the disciplinary stuff, apparently.