ABOUT THE BOOK
A bride is sacred whether given or…stolen.
Once upon a time…
With every end comes a new beginning.
I’m an enigma of a man with two sides. The same violent blood that’s in the Russian mafia, the Solntsevskaya Bratva lies in my veins. I’m told I could be the new Pakhan.
There’s a young scarred beauty in the kingdom, Lada Sokolova with bright eyes, a noble Mafia princess.
The fairest in the kingdom. Her marks go deeper than the ones carved on her face. I see her, and the pain in her eyes mirrors my own. They say she was supposed to be betrothed to my family.
She’s too young for me. I’m twelve years her senior so I reject her. Now, she’s getting married to a brutal Vor who’s more than twice her age. It’s been decided, and I can’t interfere.
I do the one thing I shouldn’t have, putting my life on the line.
I take her. I kidnap a bride in her wedding dress. I’m only doing what’s right, protecting an innocent.
….even from the predator inside of me.
Welcome to New York’s Underworld.
MY REVIEW
One of my favorite go-to authors has done it again. Beena Khan’s dark fairytales are a beauty to behold as she superbly unfolds her broken heroes and heroines only to watch them find peace together. Since her debut novel The Name of Red and every single one in between, I have devoured her books. Her mastery at storytelling will reel you in as you lose yourself in the captivating characters and the harsh worlds they live in.
There were no happy endings for a beast in a story. And I’d been a beast my entire life. Never the beauty.
Lada’s life is already planned out for her. She is to be married to a man who makes her skin crawl after being rejected by the man she always dreamed of as her husband. Her father and brothers have chosen for her and now she’s left to fate. Until she is kidnapped from her wedding by the man who said she was too young for him. He risked his job, his secret life, and his family to save her. But then he left her with others where she almost died. No one wanted an ugly cursed beast like her. Miran Demir is just a savior doing his civic duty.
Miran lived and breathed his job as Director of the DEA. He had no time for marriage so he rejected his uncle’s request to marry the daughter of a Bratva Sovietnik, the councilor to the Pakhan. And Miran had to reject this young beautiful woman in front of an audience as she never once looked at him or said anything when her father took her away. His life changed the day he met Lada Sokolova. His heart changed the day he met Lada Sokolova.
Lada’s serene innocence and defiant hope are a good match to Miran’s dark savior complex and alpha possessiveness. Miran is a character I’ve been wanting to read more about since A Beauty So Cruel and A Beast So Cold and he’s everything and more than I hoped for. He has Bratva blood in his veins but chose to go into law enforcement instead. However, he bends the law when he needs to when “interrogating” the worst of the criminals including his stepbrother’s father, Enzo, who had kidnapped and tortured Miran’s mother before she escaped with her bodyguard (Miran’s father) many years ago. When Miran kidnaps Lada at her wedding to a man she despises, he chooses his fate as her protector and observing him fight his feelings for her as she innocently and naively seduces him is a pleasure to watch. Yes, Miran has a very dark side to his persona as he acts out his revenge, but his devotion to Lada is what I expect from the man who saved Dahlia from her fate many years ago. Lada is very naive, but she has been sheltered all her life with not much social interaction with others, especially boys. So watching her tease and beguile a virile grown man like Miran is so sexy as he plays along…until he doesn’t. It’s a slow build just to the first kiss, but man oh man is it worth waiting for.
What I love about Beena Khan’s books is how she connects the characters in each series. In this book, we get to see Vlad and Dahlia, and Roza, Kaya and Enzo again with special epilogues at the end giving final closure to their heartbreaking and heartwarming stories. She also has great cliffhangers that do not detract from the story but gives you preemptive fodder for what is to come. Two characters on my radar to look out for are Zander and the surprising Bratva sister who had Miran at gunpoint. This book is fine to read as a standalone, but I strongly encourage you to read the whole series. You will not regret it.
I am thrilled to recommend Miran and Lada’s love story filled with angst, passion, revenge, and redemption. The characters are compelling and complex and their worlds are dark and unpredictable. What more could you ask for?
Thank you once again to Beena for giving me the opportunity to read her book with no expectation of a positive review.
Beauty & The Beast Series
1. A Beauty So Cruel (2021) – My review
2. A Beast So Cold (2021) – My review
3. A King of Beasts (2021) – My review
4. A Beauty So Cursed (2021)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Beena Khan writes literary fiction and edgy, contemporary romance. She 27 years old and lives in New York. She’s from Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, an immigrant who moved to New York when she was five years old. She currently holds a Masters Degree in Developmental Psychology. She enjoys reading, writing, and netflixing. The Name of Red is her debut novel published at the age of 26. All of her books are on Kindle Unlimited + Free Novella!
Follow Beena on her website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Goodreads.
