Mafia Monday: The Mafia Verse of LJ Shen

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THE MAFIA VERSE OF LJ SHEN


If you’ve ever finished an LJ Shen book and immediately wondered, “Wait… haven’t I met that family before?” the answer is probably yes.

LJ Shen has built one of my favorite interconnected mafia universes, where characters cross paths, family trees branch across multiple series, and one romance often leads you straight into another.

What starts as a single book can quickly turn into an entire reading journey, and speaking from experience, that’s exactly what happened to me.

Today I’m diving into LJ Shen’s mafia multiverse, sharing how the books connect and hopefully helping a few of you decide where to start.

So, grab your coffee or tea, or in my case, a Diet Coke, settle into your favorite reading chair, and let's talk romance, felonies, and family dynasty.

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Shen's families operate primarily in New York City, the Bronx, Boston, and Camorra. She has perfected the combination of dark romance and crime with power plays and emotions. 

Her Core series is the one most people are seeing at the bookstores today...Bad Bishop and Twisted Pawn, this is where I actually started, and have read backwards ( kind of ). What most people who are new to Shen don't realize when they pick up Bad Bishop is that there is so much more before it. Of course, not everyone is like me and will pick it all up, but listen, you should! You are perfectly fine reading Bad Bishop and Twisted Pawn and going on from there with the newer books. Two more books, Fallen Rook and Heartless King, are in the works. These four books are called SOCIETY OF VILLAINS.

So let's start with the older books that make up the mafia verse:


--SINNERS OF SAINT--

These are the orginal gangsters...the books are :

Vicious

Defy

Ruckus

Scandalous

It is not until you reach Scandalous do you start hitting the mob world.


--ALL SAINTS HIGH--

This is the next generation of the Sinners...the books are:

Pretty Reckless

Broken Knight

Angry God

Damaged Goods

This series starts introducing some of the important crime families 


--BOSTON BELLES--

This is the story of the Boston family and embraces mob ties...

The Hunter

The Villian

The Monster

The Rake


--FORBIDDEN LOVE --

This series brings in the Brennan and Vitale families interacting with the the main characters...

Truly, Madly, Deeply

Wildest Dreams

Handsome Devil

Handsome Devil will connect you to the new books of Society. In it MMC Tate and his wife Gia make an appearance in Bad Bishop

Tiernan Callaghan & Lila who are the mains in Bad Bishop are in Handsome Devil

 The Ferrante family play a prominant role in the back ground of Handsome Devil. From that family come Achilles and Enzo who also appear in Bad Bishop. There is a lot of family connections that begin in these books, so if you really dont want to take on a HUGE multi verse, but you would like to start with a bit of history I would recommend starting with Hamdsome Devil, from there you can move on to Bad Bishop and Twisted Pawn.

Also, please note, all of these can be read as standalones with out missing any of the plot in the book you are reading.



HAPPY READING.....TEE x












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