Giovanna Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Updated on October 6, 2026

Verdict: A propulsive, genuinely dark sapphic mafia debut with a butch heroine readers fall hard for and chemistry they call explosive, undercut by an age gap with a childhood history some readers cannot get past and an MF scene a sapphic-marketed book did not need.

Best for: Readers who want a crime family that actually commits crimes, a stoic woman doing the real work behind a useless brother, and forbidden longing with explicit payoff, and who can read past rough editing and a power imbalance the book does not interrogate.

Heat level: ★★★★★ (5/5 — romance.io’s “explicit and plentiful” band, with multiple on-page F/F scenes and one M/F scene)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.8/5 — a 4.16 Goodreads average across 902 ratings, with a small but pointed minority report about the age gap, the MF scene and the editing)

Tropes: Forbidden love, brother’s fiancée, arranged marriage, age gap, butch/femme, mafia family, protective heroine, long-held crush, overlooked heir, slow-building tension.

Giovanna by Victoria Arrow is the self-published first book in the Marino Famiglia series, a dark sapphic romance set inside a Sydney crime family, and its collision is simple and nasty: Giovanna Marino, the passed-over daughter who quietly holds the family together, and Francesca, the woman her playboy brother has been ordered to marry.

Published on June 17, 2023, it holds a 4.16 average across 902 Goodreads ratings, with 79% of them at four or five stars, a 3.95 on StoryGraph from 182 ratings, and 4.4 stars from 466 ratings on Amazon. The average hides a sharp split, though: the people who love it love the heroine, and the people who dislike it object to the same few things in strikingly similar language. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Giovanna About?

This is mafia romance in the full genre sense, not a contemporary romance with a crime-family backdrop. There is violence, intimidation, torture and murder on the page, and one four-star reader praises it for not looking away. It is also an age-gap romance. Francesca is twenty-four when she comes home, and one reviewer puts the gap at fourteen years, which would make Giovanna about thirty-eight; the book’s own blurb doesn’t give her age. The two women knew each other when Francesca was a girl, and that history matters to how the book lands.

Giovanna is defined by what she has been denied: the title her father should have left her, any life outside the famiglia, and permission to want anything for herself. Francesca is defined by what she has carried for eight years abroad, a trauma her parents dealt with by sending her away, and a crush on Giovanna that distance never cured. It is told in the first person, and one reviewer counts three narrating voices, so we see past Giovanna’s stoic surface.

What Makes This Sapphic Mafia Romance Work

Giovanna herself: The most consistent praise in the reviews is for the heroine. Readers call her a strong, bad-ass female don, and several five-star reviews are essentially love letters to her. One reader says she was still thinking about Giovanna months later.
The chemistry: “Explosive” and “undeniable” recur in the positive reviews. The forbidden setup, falling for your brother’s fiancée, gives every scene between them a cost, which is what forbidden love needs to work.
A crime plot with momentum: Readers mention nonstop action and multiple plot twists, and several say they finished it in a day or stayed up all night.
The family and side characters: A recurring compliment is that the wider Marino household feels populated. The brother, Elio, interests readers enough that some ask for his book.
The Sydney setting: An Australian crime family is unusual in the subgenre. Readers praise the local detail, and Sydney-based author Jo Havens has named it a favourite read for its hometown setting.

Book Synopsis

Leadership of Sydney’s Marino family passes to the old don’s son, Elio, a charming man who is far more interested in women and parties than in running anything. The person who actually keeps the business working is his sister, Giovanna. She was passed over as heir, and she has made her peace with it the only way she knows how: by being loyal, efficient and utterly closed off.

Elio’s new position comes with an obligation. He is to marry Francesca, who was sent overseas at sixteen after something happened that her parents could not face. Eight years later she is summoned home, told who she is marrying, and given no say in it. She has no interest in her fiancé and his reputation. What she has never stopped feeling is something for his sister, the woman she knew as a teenager and has thought about ever since.

Giovanna cannot afford Francesca. She is family business, she is her brother’s future wife, and wanting her would be a betrayal of everything Giovanna has given her life to. But she is also the person Francesca turns to, and the more threats close in around Francesca, the more Giovanna finds herself stepping between Francesca and harm. The question that drives the book is whether a woman who has always put the famiglia first will, for once, take something for herself, and what it will cost if she does.

My Review

The heroine is the reason this book has the readership it has, and she deserves it. Giovanna is the competent woman behind the incompetent man, a type the genre loves, but Arrow makes her butch, gruff and quietly furious about being overlooked. The five-star reviews are, almost to a reader, reviews of Giovanna.

The second real strength is commitment. This is a book that means it when it says dark. The crime plot moves, the violence has consequences, and the premise of falling for your brother’s arranged bride keeps the tension structural rather than manufactured. Readers who wanted real danger say they got it, and several say they read all 397 pages in a single sitting.

Where it struggles is in the relationship’s foundations, and this is the dominant theme in the critical reviews rather than a personal gripe. Giovanna knew Francesca as a child, and at least four reviewers use words like “grooming”, “predatory” or “power imbalance” about how that history sits under the romance; even some five-star readers acknowledge the problem and say they chose to overlook it. Stacked on top: an explicit MF scene that several readers object to in a book sold as sapphic; Francesca repeatedly cast as the woman in danger who needs saving, which two reviewers call repetitive; and editing. Multiple readers flag grammatical errors, unclear scene transitions or small timeline inconsistencies, and one calls the prose closer to fanfiction than a finished novel.

There is also an expectation to reset. Some list pages, including our own original take on this book, describe Giovanna as a glacial slow burn where restraint outweighs explicitness. The reader evidence does not support that. The emotional resolution takes time, but the author’s own content note promises explicit spice, two reviewers rate the heat at the top of their scale, and one reader stopped at 1% because of explicit content in the opening pages. If tension without much heat is what drew you, calibrate. If you wanted a dark mafia book with real spice, it delivers.

My honest note: A memorable heroine and a committed dark premise, carried by chemistry and momentum more than craft. If an age gap with a childhood history, or an MF scene in your sapphic romance, is a hard line, take that seriously; if not, Giovanna is worth meeting.

Element	In Giovanna
Central relationship	Giovanna Marino & Francesca — the passed-over mafia daughter and her brother’s arranged fiancée, about fourteen years apart by one reviewer’s count
Core tropes	Forbidden love, brother’s fiancée, arranged marriage, age gap, butch/femme, long-held crush
Setting	The Marino crime family in contemporary Sydney, Australia
Heat level	5/5 — romance.io “explicit and plentiful” (16 ratings); multiple F/F scenes and one M/F scene
Series	Marino Famiglia book 1 — central romance resolves; no book 2 published as of October 2026
Content notes	Sexual assault (not described on page, per the author), violence, torture and murder, profanity, an explicit M/F scene, past trauma, an age gap where the leads knew each other in Francesca’s childhood, comments some readers read as biphobic

How Dark and Spicy Is Giovanna?

Spicy enough that the slow-burn label on some lists is misleading. romance.io readers put it in the top steam band, 5 of 5, “explicit and plentiful”, across 16 ratings. The author’s own content note promises explicit spice, with one MF scene and multiple FF scenes, and the review site I Heart SapphFic tags it as hot and steamy with graphic sexual content. Readers back that up: two reviewers rate the spice at their maximum, one praises the intimate scenes as unusual, and one DNF’d at 1% because of explicit content right at the start. The heat is a draw for most readers, not an interruption, which is why 5/5 is the honest number.

The thing worth knowing in advance is the MF scene. It is the single heat-related complaint that recurs, from readers who came for a sapphic romance and did not expect it, and one reader who stopped reading points to the circumstances around it as well as its presence. No reviewer I found flags on-page sexual violence; the author notes the sexual assault is not described. If you want sapphic mafia with explicit heat but without that element, Forbidden Girl runs warring crime families at 4/5, and A Bride for the Viper goes darker still.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a butch, stoic heroine who is the real power behind the throne, a mafia plot with genuine violence and momentum, forbidden longing with explicit payoff, and a Sydney setting that is not the usual New York or Chicago.

You may want to skip it if: an age gap where one heroine knew the other as a child is a dealbreaker, an MF scene in a sapphic romance would ruin it for you, rough editing pulls you out of a story, or you need a heroine with more to do than be rescued.

In short: a heroine readers adore in a dark book that asks you to accept a troubling foundation.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

There is no viral moment behind Giovanna, and I found no trade reviews, which is normal for a self-published debut. What it has instead is a slow, steady accumulation since June 2023 to 902 Goodreads ratings and 164 written reviews, plus 466 Amazon ratings averaging 4.4 stars, helped by its place in Kindle Unlimited since launch and by sapphic book bloggers passing it along. A reviewer at I Heart SapphFic put it second in her top five reads of 2023, and Jo Havens named it one of her favourite reads of 2024. It also appears on our own sapphic mafia romance guide, our possessive and obsessive sapphic romance list, and our books like Requiem for Immortals guide. Web searches turned up no BookTok trend or Reddit discussion of substance, and no audiobook edition.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Giovanna, first and by a distance. “Bad-ass” is the recurring word, and the strongest reviews are about her competence and her restraint. Second, the chemistry, with “explosive” and “addictive” appearing across independent reviews. Third, pace: “couldn’t put it down”, “devoured it in a day” and “stayed up all night” turn up again and again. Fourth, the supporting cast and family dynamics, which several readers single out. A notable minority defends the very thing others criticise: one StoryGraph reviewer argues the age gap makes sense in context, and one five-star reader names the problems and says the book was worth it anyway.

What readers argue about and complain about: The age gap and its history, above everything. At least four reviewers describe the dynamic as grooming-adjacent or predatory, citing Giovanna’s role in Francesca’s childhood and, in one review, a scene in which a young Francesca witnesses Giovanna’s sex life. Second: the MF scene, raised by at least four readers across Goodreads and StoryGraph as unnecessary in a book marketed as sapphic. Third, editing: grammatical errors, confusing transitions and timeline slips come up in at least five reviews. Fourth, Francesca as damsel, with two reviewers saying the repeated threats against her become repetitive, and one calling it trauma porn. Finally, two readers object to remarks they read as biphobic or homophobic, including one who stopped reading because of them. The genuine split is whether these are dealbreakers, and the 79% four- and five-star share says most readers decide they are not.

The series question everyone should ask first: Giovanna is labelled Marino Famiglia book 1, but more than three years after release there is no book 2. Neither the author’s Goodreads page nor her website lists or announces a sequel, despite readers asking for Elio’s story. The good news is that this book does not depend on one: at least one reviewer confirms a happy ending for Giovanna and Francesca. Read it as a standalone, and treat any sequel as a bonus.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Giovanna a standalone?

Effectively, yes. It is labelled Marino Famiglia book 1, but no sequel has been published or announced as of October 2026, and the central romance resolves with a happy ending.

How spicy is Giovanna?

Very. romance.io readers rate it 5 of 5, “explicit and plentiful”, and the author’s own content note promises explicit spice with multiple F/F scenes. It is not the low-heat slow burn some lists describe.

Is there an MF scene in Giovanna?

Yes. The author’s content note lists one explicit M/F scene alongside the F/F scenes, and it is one of the most repeated complaints from readers who expected an exclusively sapphic book.

How big is the age gap in Giovanna?

About fourteen years, by one reviewer’s count. Francesca is twenty-four; the blurb doesn’t state Giovanna’s age. The two knew each other when Francesca was a child, which several reviewers find uncomfortable.

Is there a Giovanna audiobook?

Not that I could find. The book launched on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited, and neither the author’s site nor her Goodreads blog mentions an audio edition.

What are the content warnings for Giovanna?

The author lists sexual assault (not described on page), violence, torture, explicit sex including one M/F scene, and profanity. Readers add murder, past trauma and the age-gap history.

If You Loved Giovanna, Read These Next

If it was the arranged-marriage tension inside a crime family that worked for you, Her Mafia Bride puts an ice-queen heroine in exactly that setup. For a bride on the run with a dangerous woman sent after her, try Broken Vows, and for rival crime families with explicit heat, Forbidden Girl. If the age gap is the draw, our lesbian age gap romance books list is the place to go, and our mafia lesbian romance on Kindle Unlimited page collects more in this lane. For more, browse the Book Reviews archive.

The Bottom Line

Giovanna wants to be the definitive sapphic mafia romance: an overlooked woman, a forbidden bride and a family that will not let either of them go. The heroine is memorable, the chemistry is real, and the crime plot has genuine momentum. But the age gap rests on a childhood history the book does not question, the MF scene alienates part of its audience, and the editing never quite catches up with the ambition. It is worth it for readers who want a dark, explicit mafia romance with a butch lead and can read past those problems. Check Giovanna on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Giovanna ranks as a fan-favourite indie sapphic mafia debut — a heroine readers adore and chemistry that carries the book, held back by a troubling age-gap foundation and rough editing, and best approached for Giovanna and the crime family rather than as a slow-burn love story.