Ruined by Vanessa Waltz | Book Review
Some books don’t survive a reread. Ruined by Vanessa Waltz is the only MM entry in her Sinners of Boston dark mafia series, and the second time through, I couldn’t figure out why I’d originally rated it four stars. This time, it earned three, and I’m not sure it didn’t get an extra half-star out of goodwill.
What’s it about?
Luca was born into the family but kidnapped by the bratva as a kid. After years of captivity, he killed the Pakhan to escape, only to return to a family that doesn’t trust him and keeps testing his loyalty. Enter Dominic Caruso, a made man who runs one of the family’s casinos, openly gay, and Luca’s boss. When Luca gets stabbed chasing his Russian nemesis, Dominic appoints himself caretaker, moves into Luca’s crappy apartment, and the forced proximity begins. The problem? Luca doesn’t do men. Or so he keeps insisting.
Book Review
What Works
The opening act is genuinely compelling. Luca’s backstory — kidnapped, presumed dead, fighting his way out of the bratva, then returning to a family that treats him like a potential liability — is the kind of setup that hooks you immediately. The scene where Luca breaks into Dominic’s apartment to kill him crackles with tension and possibility. For the first several chapters, this book feels like it could go somewhere dark and interesting. Dominic’s position is also well-drawn: he’s out, he’s earned his place in the family despite it, and he’s not interested in hand-holding Luca through a crisis of sexuality. That contrast has real potential.
What Didn’t Survive the Reread
The book starts falling apart around chapter ten and never recovers. The forced proximity setup: Dominic inexplicably moving his clothes into Luca’s rundown apartment to nurse him back to health, doesn’t hold up to even basic scrutiny. Why not his own place? It was much nicer. The logic gaps pile up from there.
The bigger issue is Luca’s internalized homophobia, which is the emotional engine of the entire book. Rather than exploring what it actually feels like to be a gay man hiding in a violently homophobic world, the author leans on external torture as a stand-in for internal struggle. Luca gets beaten up. Luca enters a boxing ring with no intention of defending himself. Luca spirals toward self-destruction. It reads less like a character grappling with identity and more like suffering being piled on for dramatic effect by someone who doesn’t quite understand what she’s writing about.
The book’s most critical piece of backstory, that Luca got another gay man killed during his early captivity with the bratva, and that this is the root of his self-hatred is withheld from the reader until the very end. That reveal needed to come much earlier. It would have explained Luca’s motivations, made his behavior feel earned rather than exhausting, and given the reader something to hold onto during the long middle stretch where he’s just miserable for unclear reasons. Instead, the payoff lands with a thud because by the time it arrives, you’ve already checked out.
And then there’s the pacing in the final act. In practically the same chapter where Luca rescues Dominic from his Russian nemesis, a scene where Dominic is beaten and barely functional, the two of them somehow have enough energy for a sex scene. It reads like the author forgot what she’d written a few pages earlier. The physical intimacy throughout the book is sparse (one underwhelming scene around the halfway mark, nothing substantial until three-quarters in), and when it finally arrives, it’s undercut by logistics that don’t make sense.
Who Should Read This
Read it if you’re already invested in the Sinners of Boston series and want to see a different dynamic from the usual MF pairings. The mafia world-building carries over, and Luca’s backstory is interesting in concept even if the execution stumbles.
Skip it if you’re looking for MM dark romance that handles queer male interiority with depth. There are authors doing this much better. If you want mafia MM with real emotional weight, you’ll find more satisfying options elsewhere.
The Verdict
⭐⭐⭐
Ruined has a strong premise and a genuinely gripping opening, but it can’t sustain itself. The internalized homophobia reads as shallow, the key reveal comes too late to matter, and the back half has pacing problems that break believability. It’s Vanessa Waltz’s only MM book in the series, and it reads like a first attempt at something she hasn’t quite figured out yet.
Buy Ruined on Amazon. Find all of the Sinners of Boston series by Vanessa Waltz on Kindle Unlimited.
Let’s Talk
Have you read Ruined? Did Luca’s arc work for you, or did the late reveal fall flat? Drop a comment — I’d love to hear how other MM readers experienced this one.
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