Two men on opposite sides of the same mafia legacy, forced into a rivalry that stops behaving like one. Here's an honest look at Rina Kent's MM entry into the Legacy of Gods-adjacent world.
Contents
The Premise
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Hunt the Villain is Rina Kent's dark MM college mafia romance, built on the same possessive, high-stakes DNA as the rest of her catalog but reworked for a male-male pairing. Two men tied to the same mafia inheritance are set up as rivals — and the book's central tension is how long that framing survives contact with what's actually happening between them.
Why It Works
Kent's dark college romance formula translates cleanly to an MM pairing: the possessiveness, the power imbalance, the slow admission that hatred and obsession were never actually opposites here. If you've read her other work and wondered how the formula would hold up outside a male/female dynamic, this is the answer — the mafia-legacy backdrop gives the rivalry real stakes beyond personal animosity, which keeps the "enemies" half of enemies-to-lovers from feeling arbitrary.
Who This Is For
Dark MM romance readers who want the genre's usual possessive, high-intensity register without a tonal downshift for the pairing. Expect the same content-warning territory as Kent's other dark college books — check retailer notes if you're newer to her catalog.
The Verdict
Hunt the Villain is a strong pick if you want dark romance's obsessive-rival trope without the genre's frequent default to male/female pairings — it doesn't soften anything to get there.
Building out your MM dark romance shelf this year? Our Reading Journal has a series tracker made for exactly that kind of deep-dive.
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