Raphael

📖✨ 13Pages Review

🧠 Opening Chaos

I may need to get checked out after my recent pants-on-fire situation.

Because as much as I said I was moving on from the Belles & Mobsters series...

I did not.

That’s right.

I lied to y’all.

I moved on to Book 5.

And in a surprise to absolutely no one, Book 5 is not Sasha’s book.

It is not Luca’s book.

No.

Book 5 belongs to Raphael Santos.

Because apparently Eva Winners looked at the storylines already sitting on the table and said:

“What if I added twelve more?”

Welcome to Raphael.

Somebody grab a notebook, a genealogy chart, and maybe a blood pressure cuff.

This family tree has started growing warrants.

📚 Plot + Vibe Dump

We’ve met Raphael a couple of times throughout the series.

He runs the Santos mafia.

His father, Lombardo Santos, was a certified creep and human trafficking garbage pile connected to Benito King, Ivan Petrov, and the most ridiculous agreement known to dark mafia books everywhere:

The Belles and Mobsters agreement.

Now, just so everybody understands the family tree before we go any further, let me break this down.

Lombardo Santos was married to Esmeralda Santos.

He also had an affair with Marietta Taylor.

Marietta Taylor is the mother of Alexei and Isabella.

Isabella is married to Vasili Nikolaev.

Vasili is Alexei’s brother.

Raphael Santos is Isabella’s brother.

Still with me?

Good.

Because wait.

There’s more.

Aurora, who is now married to Alexei, has two best friends named Sailor and Willow.

Sailor is the sister of Anya.

Anya was also involved with Lombardo Santos.

Lombardo raped Anya and got her pregnant.

And while he did that, he forced Sailor, Willow, and Aurora to watch.

Anya died giving birth to Gabriel.

Sailor adopted Gabriel, who is also Raphael and Isabella’s brother.

Hope you got all that.

Because baby, this is not a family tree anymore.

This is Ancestry.com after a crime spree.

💀 Character Crimes Section

🖤 Raphael “Diablo” Santos

Raphael Santos is a Colombian drug lord.

Ruler of the Florida underworld.

Head of the Santos cartel.

Nightclub owner.

Casino owner.

Blue-eyed, because of course he is.

And honestly?

I liked Raphael from the beginning.

He had presence.

He had power.

He had that dangerous “I own everything in this room including the exits” energy.

And he loved Sailor for eight years.

Eight.

Years.

Another mafia man down bad and emotionally committed before the woman even remembered meeting him.

That is basically the official Belles & Mobsters mating ritual at this point.

Raphael also had enough sense to make sure that if anything happened to him and Sailor, Gabriel would be raised by Alexei and Aurora.

I know that’s right.

Surround that baby with people who will love him, protect him, and possibly kill anyone who looks at him sideways.

Good parenting through organized crime.

We support.

🖤 Sailor McHale

Sailor is a journalist.

Blonde hair.

Blue eyes.

From a prominent political family.

Sister of Anya McHale.

Best friend of Aurora.

Aunt, guardian, and adoptive mother of Gabriel.

She is strong.

Smart.

Capable.

And has been through absolute hell.

Her family is disgusting.

Her father is trash.

Her mother is worse for allowing so much of that trash to sit in the living room and call itself parenting.

Sailor survived witnessing what happened to Anya.

She raised Gabriel.

She kept going.

She deserved a better story than this book gave her.

Because Sailor had all the ingredients of a great FMC, but the plot around her kept tripping over its own shoelaces.

😒 Side-Eye Section: The Blue Eye Epidemic

Eva.

Girl.

Baby.

We need a diversity department and an ophthalmologist at this point because everybody cannot have blue eyes.

This is getting ridiculous.

Dark blue eyes.

Blue flames.

Dark sapphires.

Ocean blues.

Ocean gaze.

Blue, blue, blue, blue, blue.

Is there no other color?

Nobody has green eyes?

Hazel?

Brown?

Amber?

Anybody?

Blue eyes are a recessive gene, ma’am.

At this point, I need somebody to call the optometrist at Walmart because this entire fictional universe has been staring at me through colored contacts for five books.

Even the security guards have blue eyes.

The doctor who delivered Gabriel had blue eyes.

Baby, what is going on?

This is not world-building.

This is an eye exam.

📉 Chaos Corner

The prologue starts with a courthouse explosion.

Great.

We love immediate chaos.

Then Chapters 1 and 2 go back eight years to explain what happened between Raphael and Sailor.

And I have one question.

Why was that not the prologue?

Eva did this in Book 4 too.

Girl.

Please.

You cannot keep opening the book in the present, rewinding, flashbacking, and then acting surprised when the timeline starts smoking.

I probably should have taken that break because I’m grading hard now.

And speaking of timelines?

This book could not put together a decent timeline if it had fourteen watches and extra help.

A few days ago, Aurora’s father was having a fundraiser.

Now, somehow, Alexei and Aurora are married.

Did I miss a novella?

A wedding invitation?

A time portal?

This is Eva’s world and apparently we’re all just living in it.

🧨 La Reina Opening Day Disaster

Raphael, baby.

You need an HR department.

Because what do you mean on the opening day of your brand-new club, La Reina, you killed two employees?

One with a gun.

One with a knife.

Sir.

Where did you find these employees?

Indeed?

Craigslist?

A flyer taped to a gas station pump?

Now, to be fair, he saved Sailor from being raped by his bouncer.

So bless his murderous little heart.

But then he gets back to his office after killing employee number two of the day and finds his father choking Anya.

What in the Florida water is going on?

This family is exhausting.

💔 The Trauma Suitcase

Eva, I need you to get a bigger suitcase.

Because why are we trying to pack all this trauma into one book?

The family tree was already enough.

Now we have Anya.

Sailor.

Gabriel.

Lombardo.

Sailor’s father.

Sailor’s mother.

Miguel.

The Belles and Mobsters agreement.

The Tijuana cartel.

A courthouse explosion.

A forced marriage.

A private island.

A kidnapping.

A jealous cook.

A secret contract.

A dead construction worker.

A trafficking ring.

A dead mother addicted to cocaine.

A murdered brother.

A third-act breakup.

And at least forty-seven descriptions of blue eyes.

This book has more storylines than a House Party movie.

And somehow, the plot still waited until the last quarter to show up.

😭 What Actually Worked

The world-building is still the best thing Eva Winners has going in this series.

Everybody is connected.

Everybody stays connected.

The previous mafia men and their wives show up.

The kids show up.

The Ashford brothers show up.

The family network is alive and active.

When something goes wrong, everybody pulls up.

I like that.

It makes the series feel like a real interconnected world instead of a bunch of disconnected couples sharing the same font.

And Raphael?

Raphael worked for me.

I liked him from the beginning.

Sailor worked for me too.

She was strong, smart, capable, and deserved her happily ever after.

I just wish the book around them had been tighter.

😒 Side-Eye Section Part Two: Amnesia Again?

Eva girl.

We need to talk about this lack-of-memory trope.

Because here we are for the third book in a row where a man met a woman years earlier and the woman does not remember him.

Again.

Again.

AGAIN.

What happens after these women meet these men?

Do they get bumped on the head?

Is there something in the water?

Is the blue-eye epidemic causing memory loss?

This is not Finding Nemo and these women are not Dory.

Sailor saw the Diablo tattoo on Raphael’s hand eight years ago.

Eight years later, she sees the same tattoo.

And still?

Nothing?

Girl.

Come on.

👑 MVP Section

🏆 Gabriel

The baby deserves peace.

That is all.

After the adults around him turned the family tree into a felony forest, Gabriel deserves safety, stability, snacks, and people who are willing to burn the world down for him.

Raphael making sure Gabriel would go to Alexei and Aurora if anything happened to him and Sailor?

That was one of the best choices in the book.

Good job, Diablo.

🔥 Spice Rating

🌶️🌶️🌶️

Spicy enough.

Not life-changing.

But there was heat.

Optional tag:

“My Diablo, my devil, my angel, my heaven… please find a new sentence.”

📊 Damage Report

⭐⭐⭐

Three stars.

Good characters.

Messy execution.

Blue eyes everywhere.

🧨 Final Verdict

This was a rough one.

I read it fast, but this was not Eva Winners’ best work.

Raphael and Sailor deserved better than the way this book was structured.

Raphael had the makings of a great MMC.

Sailor was strong, smart, capable, and had enough trauma to fill a federal investigation.

Their happily ever after was deserved.

Their connection had potential.

But getting to the actual plot took forever.

Then the last quarter of the book tried to cram everything in like somebody packing for a two-week trip with a lunchbox.

The pacing was off.

The timeline was questionable.

The amnesia trope was recycled.

The third-act breakup showed up like it was collecting a paycheck.

And the repeated phrases?

Baby.

The “my Diablo, my devil, she’s my angel, my heaven” situation wore me out.

What in the Baby Shark is this repetitive mess?

This formula did not give us cupcakes.

This formula gave us dry batter and a prayer.

💬 Signature Outro

This book needed:

• fewer blue eyes,

• a working timeline,

• an HR department for La Reina,

• a bigger trauma suitcase,

• Sailor to remember a whole tattooed man,

• Beatrice to mind her unemployed business,

• the Belles and Mobsters agreement burned in a ceremonial fire,

• and Eva Winners to shake a Magic 8 Ball and come up with a new trope.

Now for real this time?

I’m taking a break.

Because I am sick of Eva Winners and her ridiculous world.

Will I finish the next two books?

Probably.

But not right now.

Right now, I need distance, hydration, and a book where somebody has brown eyes.