The Virgin by Tiffany Reisz
This review is from 2015 and is kept here for reference. Titles, prices and availability may have changed.
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Recommendation
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the teen virgin corrupted by Eleanor in the convent without a baby carriage.
Like the other two books in The White Years (The Saint and The King), The Virgin is a flashback story that not-so-gently fills in many of the holes opened in The Red Years. We finally learn about the mysterious year Nora spent with her mother, the nun, and why she is sequestered away at a convent. And because Tiffany Reisz is a literary sadist, she keeps us on our literary-loving toes while we’re teased and taunted with a book-long cliffhanger. And still, I want to be teased, taunted, left hanging, and resolved, all while never wanting it to end.
I can’t say enough about this series. The Virgin bridges the gap between “book”and “literature.” It reaches the highest highs and the tear-your-heart-out lows. Tiffany pushes the boundaries, as always and keeps the story moving forward while answering questions left from The Red Years.
As usual, I was blown away by Tiffany Reisz. I really don’t know how she continues to surprise me with her genius. And that’s what this book is…..Pure. Genius. I laughed, I cried (more than once), I fell in love, I squealed. I enjoyed every second of this story. Everything Forever.
The Virgin comes in like some sort of breach in the security of literature. Curl up with Søren, Nora, and Kingsley for the bedtime story of a lifetime. It is gut wrenching and beautiful and brutal and honest and erotic and…. everything. It is everything. Another jewel in the Sinner’s crown. Perfection.
The only bad thing about reading Tiffany Reisz, is that anything you try to read after Tiffany Reisz… kinda sucks.
*wanders around sad and bookless, holding cardboard “will work for more Original Sinners” sign* [January 2015]
Publisher synopsis
The temptation to sin has never been this strong… For years, Kingsley Edge warned Eleanor the day would come when she would have to run. She always imagined she'd be running with Søren. Instead, she's running from him. Eleanor finds refuge in the one place the men in her life cannot follow. Behind the cloistered gates of the convent where her mother has taken orders. With Eleanor gone, the lights have gone out in Kingsley's kingdom. When he learns the reason for her disappearance, he too, turns his back on Søren. 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 not from her true nature. A virginal novice sends her down a path of sexual awakening, but it means leaving her lover behind, a sacrifice Eleanor refuses to make. The price of passion has never been higher, and Eleanor and Kingsley will have to pay it if they ever want to go home again.
Review published March 31, 2015