Book Review: Hunted (Crosshairs #1) by Jessamyn St. Claire

Reviewed by Jen

TITLE: Hunted

SERIES: Crosshairs

AUTHOR: Jessamyn St. Claire

PUBLISHER: Self published

LENGTH: 237 Pages

RELEASE DATE: January 7, 2025

BLURB:

Two unlikely men—a Mafia boss’s son on a mission to find his would-be assassin, and an aimless youth seeking to break the life pattern he always finds himself in—must join forces to stop a desperate criminal who seeks to kill them and overthrow the infamous Spadaro clan.

Nico Spadaro, the son of an infamous Cosa Nostra boss, is on a mission to find and kill the mob leader who sent a hit man after him and his family two years ago.

Rei Evans, who has no real direction in life, just lost his job and is on the verge of losing not only his boyfriend, but his livelihood.

When he takes a new job at Nico’s gentlemen’s club, Rei realizes that things aren’t what they appear to be. The head man-in-charge is using the club for illegal and shady dealings with Nico’s wealthy clientele. Rei tries to warn Nico about his right-hand man, but Nico is too consumed with his own obsession for vengeance to even notice, let alone care. It’s only when the situation takes a dark turn, threatening to upend Nico’s progress and targeting Rei, that both men will have to join forces to stop the operation before things turn deadly.

REVIEW: 

I am always up for a good mafia series and this one looks like it has some potential. Rei is the first character we meet here, and he is a bit of a mess. He has trouble keeping jobs, jumping from server job to server job, much to the annoyance of his current boyfriend. Rei and the current bf have a number of issues and they don’t really seem like a very good couple on any level. The bf opened the relationship, clearly has higher aspirations than Rei and doesn’t really offer him much aside from a place to live. On the contrary, Rei doesn’t really seem to have much interest in the bf aside from having a roof over his head, although some of that may be due to the actions of the bf in opening the relationship, etc. Either way, these two are not a likeable couple.

Nico is the owner of the private club Rei ends up getting a job at. Nico is a man on a mission for sure. He has a lot of issues of his own with his own father and family and the life that is expected of him because of that. He is in Memphis running this club as a cover to find the man responsible for attempting to take him out while putting distance between him and his wife and child. He is so hell-bent on finding the culprit and exacting revenge that he is oblivious to the attempts of his club manager to sabotage him. Rei overhears a conversation that brings this to light and also puts him in the crosshairs of the club manager.

There is much more to the story behind the club manager and his shady dealings which fights to become the main priority for Nico to deal with. They end up blending a little at some point, but the two issues remain separate problems to be dealt with. In the meantime, Nico and Rei have started growing trust and a sort of “friendship” through everything, although the brakes are put on anything sexual before they really get started. Suffice to say, there is a lot to be done in this regard to get them to a place of actual relationship. They are moving in that direction by the end, but they aren’t quite there yet.

All in all, this was an interesting start to a new series. There are a number of moving parts that take a little bit to organize to understand everything at play here, and of course, there is a lack of communication at times that throw things off. While a number of things come to light to advance this story, there are almost as many, if not more, things still up in the air. The pace picked up speed throughout, and by the end, I was ready to continue learning more. While I wasn’t completely blown away by this initial book, I am definitely interested in seeing how things play out in the next installment.

RATING:

BUY LINK:

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