By Adachi and Kyozip. Released in Japan as “Gisou Shi Shita Moto Mafia Reijou, Nidome no Jinsei wa Zettai ni Ikinobimasu ~Kamisama, Douka Kono Uso dake wa Minogashite Kudasai~” by Dre Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Emily Hemphill.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a straight up thriller light novel. Oh sure, this is in the Heart imprint, and the romance is there, but the romance is not why you read this. You read this worrying that our heroine is about to die, and you do so for almost 300 pages. There’s lots of lies and deception, there’s a truly horrible family that does some truly horrible things (woe to the woman who poses as our heroine, you don’t want to know how she turns out), there is a very high body count, and there’s a lot of people who hate themselves. And of course, as the title might tell you, when I say family I mean “Family”. Like the Hotel California, our heroine discovers that you can check out any time you want (figuratively), but you can never leave.

In a remote nunnery, Novice Sister Dina Tosca has been there for ten years, being a pious young nun in training. Unfortunately, a ne’er-do-well comes looking for a Dina Ferletti, a blonde daughter of a mafia don who went missing ten years ago and was presumed dead. Now, Dina Tosca is not blonde, and she’s a year younger than the other Dina is supposed to be, but that’s good enough for the Ferletti family, who kidnap her and drag her back to the current head of the family, Aurelio… and if it tursns out not to work, well, they can always kill her. Fortunately, there’s a mole in the Forletti family who’s trying to take them down, and he wants to help Dina. Though to do so she’ll have to pose as Dina Ferletti. Which should not be hard, as well, she really *is* Dina Ferletti, and she really doesn’t want to tell her new ally as he may just kill her.

There’s some good intrigue here, much of it nasty. Dina’s dinner with her brother and his lover turns out to be “do you remember the right way to eat to avoid being poisoned?”, and when another “Dina Ferletti” shows up, our Dina worries that, even if she is the real deal, she may not be real enough. The romantic leads are both good, but my favorite character may be Luca, a member of the family who brought Dina there and who doesn’t like Teodoro… and the feeling is mutual. He’s the classic “I am mostly a terrible person, but I am also attracted to the main heroine” sort, and I was delighted by his character arc. Let’s also say that he and Teodoro are very lucky this is the Heart line and not the Knight line. If there’s a weakness it’s Aurelio, whose backstory didn’t really resonate for me, as well as a bit TOO much “are they really poisoned this time” set pieces.

This is very much told in a single volume… but it’s Drecom, so you know they were asked to write another, and it’s coming. If you like a good dark action thriller, this is right up your alley.