I received this book from Hachette Ireland in exchange for an honest review.

On a tumultuous night in Dublin, kingpin Arthur Ward is shot dead the same night he ends up in a fist fight with Liam Kennedy. As Ward's family try to piece together who was behind Arthur's killing, Liam's pull together to make sure he had nothing to do with. Leo Kennedy, the black sheep of the family, returns home having previously cut ties with his criminal family yet ends up pulled in nevertheless. Meanwhile, on the Ward estates, two sisters who traveled to Ireland hoping for a better life fight to find each other again and escape the hell they ended up living in.

This book was...just okay? It definitely had a lot of the ingredients that should make a riveting crime family - two families and a crime that hinted at a gang war (that never ended up happening?), several different criminal enterprises including people trafficking and a sex ring, and a cannabis farm. I think there wasn't actually that much excitement happening considering everything going on and the people who we were believed to be silly, vapid and stupid were...exactly that. There was no hidden reveals about who people were and there was no wool pulled in front of the readers' eyes in any way which could have been fun.

I feel like the people trafficking story could have had so much attention and while I appreciate the author shining a light on this activity - while I'm not stupid and I'm aware it happens in Ireland, it's something I haven't though of enough and it's always shocking to think there are girls being treated in this way - I feel like it became an almost unnecessary part of the story. Yulia and Celestine only served to feck things up a bit for Murphy and Rally, and that was about it.

The ending was also really flat, and honestly I felt a bit disappointed in this. For a crime novel set in Dublin, I was expecting more.