Earlier this year, I discovered Sonja Grey’s work while scouring Goodreads for my next book. There, I found Born Into Sin, which starts a new series based on the children of a previous collection Grey had published—the Melnikov Family that runs a Russian Bratva in the city.
I adored the first and second books in the new series, Devils Will Rise: Melnikov Legacy, and followed the author on Instagram. There, I heard the news of her next publication in the series coming in the fall, and that she was looking for beta readers. Miraculously, I was able to become an ARC reader for the new novel where I am given a copy of the book ahead of publication in exchange for my honest review on Amazon and Goodreads. It has been a few weeks since the book came out, but I wanted to do a blog post about it as my thoughts have fully accumulated.
The third book, Born into Chaos, focuses on Svetlana and her bodyguard Vitya with a focus on the trope of forbidden and forced proximity romance. What I liked was the building of the romance and tension between the two characters as they are not allowed to be together, though has liked each other for two years since he was assigned to her (also, she saved his life before all this and that’s why he asked to guard her. Cute, right!?). This is somewhat of a spoiler but there is also an abandoned baby that Vitya finds, and they quickly become surrogate parents. From there, they travel to one of the family’s vacation houses to stray from the prying eyes of her father as they play house—hence the forced proximity trope. Some readers ate that up, but I found it took away from them as a couple though it pushed them to be a family. At the end of most of Grey’s books, the main FMC or MMC gets taken by an enemy organized crime syndicate and in this case, it was Svetlana and the baby—who they named Samantha—to which Vitya has to tell her father—who freaks out—and has to work with the family to get his ‘found family’ back. They get rescued, and in the end, Vitya and Svetlana get married. It makes the tension that is emphasized in the beginning come full circle.
I do find that a lot of Grey’s books follow a certain formula, but if they work for her—and they do—why not? Nevertheless, I highly recommend looking into her novels if you’re into organized crime with a focus on contemporary romance. She is a hidden gem.
About the Author:
Mia Rampersad is a junior at Florida State University, majoring in Creative Writing with a minor in Humanities. She currently is an editorial assistant for the Kudzu Review and part of the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree, she hopes to pursue a career as an author.
The Kudzu Review 
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