Review: Little Nightmare (The Rise of the De Langes #2) by Rachel van Dyken

       

Print Length: 206 pages

Publisher: Van Dyken Enterprises INC (June 5, 2025)

From Goodreads.com:  Welcome to your final dream.

Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.
I promise. Just close your eyes.
Sleep.

It's a bad omen when the nickname for the girl you're supposed to protect is Black Widow. It's still unclear where she got it from, but I've heard the word machete and laughter thrown around way more than I'm comfortable with.

The pay is so high that my brother and I, being from the De Lange Family can't really say no.
We slide so easily into the protective unit of the Five Families that they forgot to check if we had extra knives to drive into their backs.

They have a debt to pay.
And I'm more than willing to collect it in blood—hers specifically.

I'll make her love me.
I'll make her trust me.
And when she finally gives in…
I'll make sure she knows that everything she's ever loved was destroyed by the one she gave her heart to.

She’s a living nightmare and I’m the monster she innocently invited in.
Care to play?

She thinks I’m a toy, I’ll show her I’m the master of the web and in the end, I’ll make sure she bites.

When one Family falls—another will rise.
The Rise of the De Langes

                                                         *******************

My Rating: 1 star out of 5

I’ve been a fan of this author for decades now, going all the way back to her indie days, and there was a time when this series was one of my favorites. Which is exactly why it pains me to write this review. And honestly, I don’t know if the issue is that I’ve outgrown her as a reader or if these books just aren’t as good as I once thought.

Let’s start with something I never expected to say about a Rachel van Dyken novel: the sheer number of errors. Within the span of a few chapters, Ace’s eye color changes from hazel, to green, to blue, back to green, and then blue again. There are also multiple instances of the wrong words being used entirely (“aren’t their cameras,” “is choice and it wasn’t me”), as well as missing words (“When the nanny, Sandra, back”). 

Then you have the fact that Raven continues to be referred to as Raven Alfero even after marrying Ace, when she should have been Raven De Lange. I understand that authors are human and mistakes happen, but considering how many people are listed as having helped with this book, it’s genuinely mind-boggling that this many errors made it into the final product.

Then there’s the worldbuilding, which raises questions of its own. Apparently there is now housing on the Eagle Elite college campus for married couples. That alone doesn’t make much sense, but assigning Ace and Raven to one before they were even married makes even less sense. Yes, she was in danger and he was acting as her bodyguard, but she lived close enough to commute. The arrangement felt like a forced convenience for the plot rather than a believable decision.

And finally we get to the biggest problem of all. Something other reviewers have pointed out in the past, and something I admittedly overlooked before, has now become impossible to ignore. The lack of research regarding the mafia. One of the fathers pulling a gun on someone for failing to bow and justifying it by saying they are “mafia royalty” was ridiculous but easy enough to shrug off. What I couldn’t overlook was the line about “the entire Cosa Nostra plus half the Russians and some of the families from Sicily” gathering together. The Cosa Nostra IS  the Sicilian mafia. That’s not a minor detail; it’s fundamental. For an author who claims to have done extensive research throughout the course of this series, this is a glaring oversight. It would have made more sense to reference the five families alongside other Cosa Nostra families. The confusion deepens with the mention of a “Capo del Capi,” a title that technically existed but was abolished in 1931 by Lucky Luciano in favor of a Commission system specifically designed to prevent a single boss from holding that level of power. The novel references commissions being held as well, which makes the inclusion of a Capo even more contradictory.

The violence also suffers from a lack of realism. Ace repays a debt by giving “a pound of flesh,” resulting in large sections of skin being cut from his chest, arm, and leg. He’s bandaged, given morphine, and put to bed, even though we’re told the chest wound is already bleeding through the bandages. The problem here is that injuries of that severity would require immediate emergency care due to shock, blood loss, and risk of infection. This is not something a person simply sleeps off. And don’t even get me started on the logic of throwing an unused pregnancy test on the floor, stomping on it like a toddler having a tantrum before shooting it. Nothing says stable individual (especially a grown man with a grown daughter) like putting bullet holes in her floor.

This series has been a long journey for me, the first Eagle Elite book came out in 2013, and from what I understand, the next installment is meant to be the last. For me, though, this is where I hop off. Especially since the upcoming book appears to recycle the familiar bodyguard-falls-for-the-girl-he’s-protecting trope (exactly as this one did), complete with mutual hatred that magically turns into love. After everything, I’m just done.