Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Bullets and Butterflies
SERIES: The Elite
AUTHOR: Maz Maddox
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 151 pages
RELEASE DATE: May 25, 2023
BLURB:
As the on-call doctor for a club that caters to assassins, Liam Bexley has learned to set some strict boundaries:
Never ask questions about their work.
Always stay professional.
And never, ever date a client.
Easy rules to follow, and ones that Liam takes very seriously. Being lonely and boring is a small price to pay to keep trained killers out of his personal life.
In one chance encounter with the handsome hitman Francisco Delgado, Liam’s routine and existence is completely altered.
Pulled into the insanity of rival assassin guilds and a high profile death, Liam is suddenly stuck eluding danger at every turn with a man he has no business fraternizing with.
Even if he is interesting.
And really hot.
And covered in tattoos.
Liam may have to rethink those boundaries…
Bullets & Butterflies is part of the multi-author series The Elite. Each book can be read as a standalone and in any order. What links these books together is The Anonymous, a club beneath the gritty city where only the elite are welcome.
REVIEW:
Bullets and Butterflies is Maz Maddox’s contribution to the multi-author shared universe series, The Elite. Despite the story revolving around a hitman, Francisco Delgado, and a doctor, Liam Bexley, who works for the assassin’s guild, Cisco and Liam’s romance surprisingly lacks bite. Maddox’s originality, phenomenal world-building, and rich, colorful characters are what primarily draws me to her writing. But Bullets and Butterflies lacks the sharp, witty, incisive narrative that Maddox has delivered in her other stories, like her excellent RELIC shifter-romance series. Maddox tries for dry wit and humor here in Cisco and Liam’s banter and aims for the plot to deliver wacky action/adventure, but it comes up a bit short. The storyline feels rushed, as does Cisco and Liam’s relationship, and doesn’t deliver the complex, absorbing story we expect from Maddox.
That being said, Bullets and Butterflies is enjoyable, if superficial, and makes for a quick read, easily digestible in one sitting. Maddox keeps it low-angst, with low drama and a focus on the sweet and sexy relationship development between two likable leading men. Cisco and Liam are the best part of the story, but Maddox doesn’t get much beyond the surface with either of them.
Perhaps if you’ve never read Maddox before, you’ll enjoy this story more than I did. I’m familiar with her backlist and have been consistently impressed with her creative stories – for example, her RELIC series landed on my best of 2021 list. As a result, Bullets and Butterflies unfortunately suffers from the comparison. Maddox is capable of more intricate, creative, and involved storylines than what we get here. Admittedly, I haven’t read any of the other stories in this shared universe, so I don’t know if they may have given better context for some of the players, like the high-ranking members of the guilds. The story feels pretty self-contained, though, so I suspect that reading the other books won’t add much here.
RATING: 
BUY LINK: