"Claimed in the Italian's Castle"

Not my fave retelling.

Claimed in the Italian's Castle by Caitlin Crews is a Harlequin romance novel. It was actually the first one I had ever read and I am having second thoughts on ever reading another one again because this was just so bad. I don't think this author knows how to use a thesaurus because she described everything as "dark." His dark eyes, under his dark hair, he stood darkly, he was so dark. Like this is literally how she describes the man in this book. I skimmed through the last bit of this because it was just so god-awful.

For a Harlequin romance, they didn't even get busy until like 3/4 of the way through and even then it was like...wow that's what I waited for? Okay then. It's just so disappointing because I was really intrigued by the storytelling at the beginning of the book, before the guy "Ben" as I called him even shows up. Like I wanted more stories about the heroine Angelina and her family. That was really interesting to me.

Speaking of "Ben," this guy had SIX previous wives, like why would you ever go along with it. That is just insane. This is a retelling of Bluebeard, which I have never read, but I can imagine that it is at least 100x better than this garbage.

I'm giving this 2 stars because I liked the writing in the beginning and it wasn't terrible when it was describing the atmosphere and the locations but the characters and the overall story was not the best.

2/5 stars