Hunt the Villain

Sex and violence go hand in hand in bestseller Kent’s over-the-top sequel to Kiss the Villain. Vaughn Morozov, restrained heir to the New York bratva, or Russian mob, meets chaotic Yulian Dimitriev, scion of the Chicago bratva, at a summer camp organized by their feuding fathers in an attempt to cement a peace between their territories. The boys initially clash but wind up saving each other’s lives and sheltering together in a cave when the camp comes under fire. The novel then abruptly jumps four years into the future. Party boy Yulian, now a college student at the mafia-owned King’s U. in the U.K., where he can act on his bisexuality away from the disapproving eye of his abusive father, sets out to ruin Columbia student Vaughn’s perfect life as revenge for a perceived betrayal that night in the cave. He starts by flying to New York to seduce Vaughn’s girlfriend, initiating a game of cat-and-mouse between the two men that leads Vaughn to question his own sexuality. There are plenty of bonkers set pieces along the way, including explosions, masked parties, extended (and somewhat improbable) sex scenes, and shoot-outs, but the pace is slowed somewhat by the overwrought prose, which veers from swaggering, lust-filled machismo to strained attempts at lyricism. Meanwhile, the reveal of what actually happened in the cave underwhelms. Still, readers seeking dark mafia romance with unhinged and possessive leading men will eat this up. (Mar.)