Review: Waste of Worth by Bethany-Kris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
DeLuca Duet #1
Release: January 9, 2017
Genre: Mafia Romance
Dual POV - 3rd person
Length: 218 pages

Ask anyone and they will all say the same thing about just who Dino DeLuca is. A criminal, the son of a traitor, and a mafia Capo who can’t be trusted. His past has shaped his life, creating demons he can’t escape from that live in his mind day and night.

He is all too aware of just how people see him.

Closed off.
Cold.
Different.

He doesn’t care—keeping people out means no one can get close enough to hurt him again, and he already has one too many monsters with their claws stuck in his back that he’s still fighting off. His walls are so high, no one is climbing over them. Or so he thinks …

Karen came into his life like a spring shower, her light shining through the darkness and making him see something other than the hell that surrounded him for so long. She doesn’t know who he is or what he has done to become the man he is today. If he can help it, she’ll never know, and his monsters will never hurt her.

She sees his differences as beauty.
She never asks for more.
She is perfect.

The problem with happiness for Dino DeLuca is that his monsters don’t mind taking away what makes him happy. After all, what isn’t given cannot be kept.

These lessons will be the hardest he has ever learned.

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MY REVIEW

Ever since meeting Dino in Deathless & Divided, I wanted to know his story and I was excited to hear that Bethany-Kris had created a duet for him.

Dino DeLuca came across as cold, detached, and unapproachable. But it was evident from the beginning of this book that Dino was a broken man. He had a huge heart filled with compassion and understanding, however, due to his past (and present), he believed himself unworthy of any good or happiness. That all started to change when Karen Martin got him to smile. The evolution of their relationship was beautiful!

If you've read Deathless & Divided, then you know that Dino, Theo and Lily's parents were murdered because their father turned snitch. Their killer: Ben DeLuca, their uncle. Ben then took guardianship over them and made their lives a living hell by the way that he brutalized them. Dino, as the eldest, took the brunt and it broke my heart. I've been wanting Ben to die a slow and painfully miserable death. Just sayin'. Nothing much has changed except that now Dino is a man and has practically shut off his emotions. Ben can't hurt him physically but loves to find ways to torture the younger DeLuca generation, especially Dino. I'm terrified of what will happen if Dino's newfound love and happiness is discovered.

In the end, Dino and Karen's world comes crumbling down and if the glimpse I got into book two is anything to go by, shite's about to go down. This story has plenty of dirty deeds, manipulation, power plays, and suspense, as any good mafia book should. It also has a lot of love and a lot of heart and I loved seeing Dino LIVE!! He and Karen have to make so many hard decisions and sacrifices and I hope it is all worth it in the end. I better get a freaking fantastic epilogue for the pain I'm going through right now!! I can't wait to see how things turn out. I'm staying tuned for Worth of Waste!!