~ Blood Sports by Daniel May ~

 

Author: Daniel May

Title: Blood Sports

Series: The Hanged Men 1

Pages: 291

Release date: 2021 December 3

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Rating: ★★★★☆ (3,75)

Blurb:

There are deadly games... and then there are blood sports.

In Hanged Men territory, there are two rules: you don’t steal horses, and you don’t disturb their leader in his cozy retirement.

Someone broke the rules.

Jove Alms, an infamous kingpin who passed his crime empire onto his sons, is called home by signs of a traitor in his old territory. There is only one witness: a young stablehand with doe eyes and no clue what he's stumbled into.

Tobias Nimh is just trying to get by. Working under the thumb of a slavedriving horse trainer, he spends his days trying not to get trampled, and mostly succeeding. When abducted and interrogated by mobsters, he assumes his time is up. He doesn't expect rescue — or to overhear a mysterious phone call, making him a valuable pawn in a massive plot.

Jove soon finds Tobias to be a thorn in his side as much as an asset. Impulsive, frustrating, and adorable, the kid is hard to hate and even harder to handle. Jove is first distracted, second annoyed, and finally... obsessed.

Meanwhile, Tobias keeps forgetting to fear for his life. It's hard to focus on the big picture of criminal conspiracy when he's too busy trying to pour cold water on his dirty thoughts. Jove is more than twice his age, ice cold, and comes from a world of murder and wealth Tobias can barely comprehend.

Betrayals, conspiracies, and blood sports aside, the only real question is who will crack first.

Blood Sports is a dark MM mafia thriller. Written as the first in the Hanged Men series, it can be read as a standalone.

My review: 

 

This was a bit different from Daniel's other books but I still enjoyed reading it the same. 

It's slow burn and dark, with many horse and mafia references. It has a big, I mean BIG age-gap, and I looooved it. 

Sometimes it was boring for me, all the horse-maffia things and family conflict, who is the bad guy and who you can trust. Poor Tobias just got in the way, poor innocent Tobias. I loved him and his craziness, it was hilarious and it took some of the darkness away from the storyline. Tobias was the sunshine in this book.

The ending was exciting and bloody, just perfect. Enjoyed reading this, but it was too slow and boring at times for my liking.