I’ve been on a roll this year, so the 37th book I’ve read so far was Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R Miller. This was a short little read for a plane trip I took recently, from a Dark Romance rec list on TikTok. I’ve not really read much dark romance, so I picked a few easy kindle reads from this list to try and this was one of the ones that came up on multiple lists.

A sort of summary

The story switches POV’s between Kal and Elena, Kal is a hit man for a notorious mafia boss, who just so happens to be Elena’s father. We learn pretty quickly that Kal and Elena have been together in the past and now Elena is set to marry the heir of another prestigious family, a violent man, who she feels nothing but hatred towards. Just before their wedding a mysterious threat made against Elena’s family causes a change of plans, ending with Kal killing her fiancé and Elena being forced to marry him instead. From there she is swiftly whisked away to his stately home on a remote island, with a town where Kal owns half of the businesses and real estate. The mysterious threats keep coming, even as Kal tries to extricate himself from his criminal ties and go legit. Everyone is afraid of Kal, even Elena a little bit in the beginning but he’s trying to leave that life behind for her and he’ll stop at nothing to keep her safe.

What did I think?

Now, part of this is my bad for not reading the tw’s/ tropes etc properly, but this story really didn’t really hit it for me. There were things like the age difference between the MC’s, the weird backstory for why Kal is the way he is and the forced marriage that weren’t my cup of tea. `Also, the romance just wasn’t… romancey enough for me. Kal is by nature, cold and indifferent so this was never going to be a lovey dovey story but if it was supposed to follow that ‘touch and you die’ passion kind of energy, it didn’t quite come across that way to me. The spicy scenes were fine but they were all from Kal’s point of view and, again, had this very cold, calculated formula of ‘then I did this 8 times until she…’.

As for how ‘dark’ it is, I’m conflicted, granted he does carve his initial into her leg and he’s some super scary hitman guy but I’ve read fantasy stories with dark or morally grey love interests that have a far scarier, or threatening aura, even to the FMC at times, who’ve done more reprehensible things, so I don’t know what I was expecting but it didn’t feel all that dark to me. I’m not a huge fan of mafia type romance stories anyway, so again, I’m somewhat to blame for my lack of enjoyment of this story. It was fun read and definitely kept me entertained for my whole plain journey but I don’t think I’ll pick up any of the others in this standalone series’.

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