Sworn: The Marchetti Oaths

This story pulls you in fast. Lucia's voice in chapter one, exhausted, observant, quietly devastating, does the heavy lifting. A lot of the book is her POV because it's her story; Nicolás's chapters are shorter and a hundred times more dangerous.

From the cover and the synopsis you know where they'll end up, but you have *no* clue what the journey looks like to get there. The way Sofia Marchese paces the first three years, told in flashback through Lucia's slow realisation, is honestly some of the best slow burn I've read this year.

You get to know all the characters fast, and you appreciate how strong Lucia is even when shes quiet. Her protectiveness around her daughter is a force of nature. Shes not a tropey "sunshine" heroine, she's tired and steady and pieces of her break in ways you can see coming.

There is grief, secret love, a war between Five Families, and one of the most ruthless dons I've read in mafia romance. Nicolás Marchetti is closed off in a way that *makes sense*, every door he's locked is locked because of an oath he made to a dead friend. When Lucia starts to crack him open in the cathedral around chapter 19, I literally said "oh no" out loud.

I do not put books down easily. I put this one down once because I needed five minutes to recover. When they finally come together it is so. very. very. HOT. Nicolás knows how to ruin a woman in the best possible way. Their chemistry is incandescent.

It takes until roughly 80% for the big rupture, and the third act is the kind of thing that makes you forget you have a life. Lucia's choice at the very end, I won't spoil it, is the right one and it broke me a little.

Spice present, past demons present, supporting cast (Marco's mother in particular) handled with grace. No cliffhanger; the trilogy continues but Book One has its own arc with a satisfying resolution. HEA promised across the three books.

So so good. Have tissues. Pre-ordered Vow.

This is a re-read for me and still one of my favorites of the year. It just doesnt get much better than the way Nicolás writes Lucia those three letters he never sends. I love Lucia and she is perfect for him. This book always gets me in my heart.

Lucia is a widowed nurse in her late twenties who has been raising her young daughter on what she beleives is the slow drip of her late husband's life-insurance payout. She does her shifts, she keeps her head down, and she never asks why men in dark suits walk past her window at three in the morning.

Nicolás Marchetti is the head of the Marchetti family and the most feared don on the Eastern Seaboard. He has two lieutenants who have been with him since school, an empire that runs by his hand, and an oath he made to his best friend Marco on the day he died: protect her, never let her know, never let her marry. The Five Families war is about to make at least two of those impossible.

Their first real encounter after the funeral is a quiet disaster. Lucia goes to a quiet bar to celebrate three years of widowhood with one friend, and ends up face-to-face with the don she didnt know was always there. She is so humiliated by what she pieces together that night that she tries to refuse the Marchetti protection, only for Nicolás to admit his real fear is not for her safety but for what it has cost *him* to stay silent. He says he'll try to lie less. He doesn't promise to lie at all.

Lucia slowly draws Nicolás into the kind of small ordinary moments he has not had in fifteen years, coffee with her daughter, a Sunday afternoon at the marble table, at the same time as their attraction sharpens. He takes her once, in an Italian villa outside the city, and after one impossible night they return to the house and he is the same locked man he was before.

This looked like it would be a book that was all about danger and spice, but it is really about a family and a man who has been waiting for a woman to forgive him for being the only one who knew the truth. It's really well written and I had a hard time stopping. Still hot, but woven into a thoughtful, devoted story.

Lucia is a widowed nurse who has been raising her daughter on what she beleives is Marco's life-insurance payout. Three years after his death she discovers it is not, and the man who has been quietly providing for her is the most ruthless don on the Eastern Seaboard, her late husband's best friend.

Nicolás is broken after Marco's death and was never going to let anyone see him again. After a rough first meeting where Lucia is on the verge of refusing his protection, he asks her to stay alive long enough to hear him out, for the first time since her husband died she is genuinely seen. He likes the way she doesnt flinch.

The pull between them is undeniable, only Nicolás won't let it be public, won't put her name in his world, won't risk her. While it works for a while and they cross every line, Lucia realises she cannot live as a secret. She wants the whole thing. Nicolás isn't sure he can give her that without putting her in the centre of a Five Families war, and isn't sure that not giving it to her isn't a worse fate.

Nicolás knows what Lucia wants. Whether he can see past the oaths he made to give it to her is the heart of Book One.

A spicy and beautifullly atmospheric mafia romance, slow burn, best friend's widow. This book was good! I was crying over the wax-sealed letters multiple times, and I also really loved the way Lucia's daughter quietly becomes the centre of gravity around which Nicolás reshapes his whole life. I did have a few moments where I wondered if the book was longer than it needed to be, there is some repetition in the spice scenes that I'd have happily traded for more time on the marble corridor walks.

Lucia and Nicolás are far from a "natural" couple on paper. He is the head of an organised crime family on the Eastern Seaboard. She is a widowed nurse who has just spent three years not asking questions she should of asked. He doesn't want to remarry and never wanted children of his own; she has a young daughter who already belongs to her late husband. On paper this should not work, and yet their gravity does. I loved watching Lucia fall into a new life in spite of herself, with her daughter, with the Marchetti matriarch, with the cathedral as the place that finally cracks her open. Their relationship moves fast in places, but the full arc earns it.

Overall: 4/5 stars
Spice: 4/5 chili peppers (true to the cover)
Content notes: grief, mafia violence (mostly off-page), age gap, controlled possessiveness