(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

What’s in a name? Everything if you have my name.” At her exclusive Manhattan high school, seventeen-year-old Gia is the most hated/loved girl in school. Why? Her father doesn’t have a boss. He is the boss–the capo di tutti cappi, boss of all bosses. Not that Gia cares. But life gets complicated when she meets a cop she calls “Officer Hottie” and feels a suprising chemistry. Then Vogue magazine wants to feature Gia in a fashion spread about real-life bad girls. On top of this, she’s running for class president. Can Gia step out from under her dad’s shadow and show everyone there’s more to her than “Mafia Girl?

[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

My thoughts on this book in a nutshell?  Go read Son of the Mob by Gordon Korman instead.  You’ll get better characters, a better story and most importantly, a more realistic ending.

There were times I was rooting for Gia, like when she tried to advocate for the people at her exclusive private school to step up in the community.  Other times I absolutely hated her.  Mainly when she displayed the disturbing side of her nature as she stalked ‘Officer Hottie’ to his favourite bars and hangouts.  That is just plain creepy, not a romantic or really healthy sort of fascination with a person.  I get that she’s 17 and we all do stupid things at that age, but she is just so ridiculously immature at times that I wanted to slap her.  Her behaviour around Officer Hottie was one of those.

There are times when I had to really suspend disbelief.  For example there is a scene where $250,000 is found inside an ordinarily small object.  According to the US Treasury, $100 bills are .0043inches thick.  You need 2,500 bills to make $250,000 and according to my calculations the total width of those bills would be 10.75in or almost one foot.  I doubt that much money could fit inside the object in question unless it was larger than the descriptions Deborah Blumenthal supplied.  Another inaccuracy I found was the use of the word ‘patso’ to describe someone.  As anyone with a basic knowledge of Italian knows, ‘patso’ is the phonetic pronunciation of ‘pazzo’ (literally ‘crazy’).  While I can usually ignore such things, when they happen over and over I start to lose sight of the story and can’t keep my mind off of all the little mistakes that weren’t caught.

Basically, the plot of Mafia Girl dragged on because Gia was a poor character.  She has such an annoying perspective that I had a hard time actually finishing the book even though it’s only 256 pages.  Mafia Girl had such great potential like Gordon Korman’s book, but it just fell so flat.  I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone.

I give this book 0.5/5 stars.

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