REVIEW: The Virgin by Tiffany Reisz

In The Virgin (The Original Sinners: White Years #3) by Tiffany Reisz, Eleanor (aka: Elle) has loved Søren since she was a teenager. But being in a love with a priest is not easy. Especially one who is a sadist. Søren brought out the submissive side that was always just under Elle’s skin, but not until he knew she was ready. Over the past several years, she has enjoyed her pain/pleasure experiences with both Søren and their lover Kingsley. Theirs is a strange arrangement to outsiders, but to them it makes perfect sense. Until the day that Søren crosses the line and Elle leaves him. What happens over the next year brings to light Elle’s Dominant side, complicating matters even further.

‘Along with tranquility, Elle felt something else, Power. Another human being had given up control of her body to Elle, had put her life into Elle’s hands. Elle cherished that trust. It honored and aroused her.’

Kingsley decides to leave Manhattan when Søren and Elle part ways. He’s overcome with the changes in his life and the part he’s played in it. Searching for something he can’t quite grasp, he stays on an island paradise and encounters the most beautiful and enchanting women he’s ever met. Juliette is everything King longs for. But she is in a situation that doesn’t allow her freedom to follow her heart and make a life with him. Leaving her will be the hardest thing King has ever had to do. He only hopes it’s not forever.

“I want to rescue you,” he said. “Please let me.”
“You’re not a real king,” Juliette said, looking up at him. “And I’m not a princess in a tower. He’s not a dragon. We’re real people and a sword’s not going to solve this problem.”
“I know.” The two hardest words he’d said yet to her.

For fans of this series, you know that this is almost the end of Eleanor, Søren and Kingsley’s involved story. One more full length novel to go and we will find out the remaining secrets they share. I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely not ready for it to end! Especially not after this epic installment.

“Amor vincit omnia,” Kingsley read. He looked at Søren for the translation.
“Love conquers all,” Søren said.
“That’s what we’re a sign of,” Nora said. “The three of us.”

I seriously can’t get enough of this series. It’s hedonistic. It’s full of power struggles and self-discovery. There is pain — both consensual physical pain and unintentional emotional pain. But most importantly, there is an overabundance of Love between Søren, Eleanor and Kingsley. Their journey is so intricately woven and so complicated that even in book seven (there were four full length novels in the Original Sinners series, before the White Years novels) we are still learning all of the ways they have sacrificed for each other, as well as the ways they have been hurt.

In my humble opinion, it takes a skilled author to take a bold and raunchy BDSM erotic novel and make the characters and their struggles so relatable. I could absolutely empathize with Eleanor and Kingsley when they were pushed to the edge and left Søren for that year. It made sense how Eleanor both longed to go back to Søren and yet hated him for what he had done. My heart broke for Kingsley when he met the one woman he was meant to love forever, Juliette, and had to walk away. Tiffany Reisz created these situations where heartbreaking decisions had to be made and every scene was full of the multitude of emotions that one would expect to feel in such predicaments. Even as a reader, it was a definite emotional journey.

I would encourage readers to start this series at the beginning as this is a complex, ongoing journey for Søren, Eleanor and Kingsley. And I think fans of truly well-written erotica will embrace meeting The Priest, The King, and Their Queen.

Book Info:

Published April 1st 2015 by MIRA | (The Original Sinners: White Years #3)

The provocative story before the story continues in the critically acclaimed

and award-winning series The Original Sinners

For years, Kingsley Edge warned Eleanor the day would come when she, the mistress of a well-respected Catholic priest, would have to run. She always imagined if that day came, she’d be running with Søren. Instead, she’s running from him.

Fearing Søren and Kingsley will use their power and influence to bring her back, Eleanor takes refuge at the one place the men in her life cannot follow. Behind the cloistered gates of the convent where her mother has taken orders, Eleanor hides from the man she loves and hates in equal measure.

With Eleanor gone, the lights have gone out in Kingsley’s kingdom. When he learns the reason she left, he, too, turns his back on Søren and runs. On a beach in Haiti, Kingsley meets Juliette, the one woman who could save him from his sorrows. But only if he can save her first.

Eleanor can hide from Søren but she can’t hide from her true nature. A virginal novice at the abbey sends Eleanor down a path of sexual awakening, but to follow this path means leaving her lover behind, a sacrifice Eleanor refuses to make.

The lure of the forbidden, the temptation to sin and the price of passion have never been higher, and Eleanor and Kingsley will have to pay it if they ever want to go home again.