To escape her suffocating Boston mob family, Sloan O'Malley fled to Callaway Rock, Oregon. She's settling down with a job in a diner and she's secretly lusting after her next-door neighbour, rumored to be a brooding writer. Jude MacNamara is no writer, he's a hitman, and Sloan moved in the house of his target: Sorcha O'Connor. Sorcha, formerly Sheridan, is a member of the family Jude has vowed to destroy, he has nearly achieved his goal. Sloan has decided to live a little, but even if their passion is strong, will the criminal organisations kill what they feel for each other? Will they get one of them killed?

What keeps me coming back to The O'Malleys is not my love for mafia romances, as I have pointed out in the past, but Katee Robert's exceptional talent for characterisation, even when it comes to minor players. This series has a running story arc, and FORBIDDEN PROMISES does refer to characters and events from the previous books. Regardless of this, a new reader will be just as enthralled as I was. Fans of the series are in for several shocks regarding some developments. I don't like criminals as heroes, and definitely not hired killers, but Ms. Robert's superlative skills make it so that it's not about what the characters are or do, but how they are. It's not a matter of liking them or not, it's a need to know what happens to them, how they will deal with what affects them in their specific milieu, which happens to be crime. Jude is not an accidental hitman, he is a contract killer. Sloan, while being innocent in some ways, is perfectly conscious of what is going on with her family and the mob territorial wars. These people are the real deal, and I think this is what makes The O'Malleys , and FORBIDDEN PROMISES so gripping. I found it rather extraordinary that it's never a matter of judgement, that is the world that Katee Robert chose to present. It has become real to me because it is so carefully and realistically crafted. The characters are so strongly defined and so compelling, I'm forever scratching my head as to why I can't help being intrigued, and fictionally-speaking, almost in love with Dmitri Romanov, of the NYC Russian mob. Keira O'Malley remains an enigma whose unpredictable and erratic behaviour could affect the dynamics of the underworld.

FORBIDDEN PROMISES is the best book in this excellent series. The plotting is unbelievably even tighter, it's darker and has more sizzle. As the series progresses, far from getting stale, the story arc is getting more complex as alliances are constantly redefined, and there's always the threat that someone will get killed or double- crossed. One could expect some repetition or slacking off from Ms. Robert, but on the contrary, characters that were featured in earlier books continue to grow and don't necessarily behave as we expect. No matter how long The O'Malleys series will last, and if there are spin-offs, I'm in for the duration. This is an extraordinary series by any standards, and FORBIDDEN PROMISES slays the competition.