The Saint (Mills & Boon Spice)

I can't praise this series highly enough. This book focuses on Kingsley's tale and how he became the King of the underground sex club.The story starts with Kingsley visiting Grace and Søren's son and he tells of the time when he and Søren reunited after 11 years apart. After leaving St Ignatius Kingsley joins the French Foreign Legion and Søren takes the path to become a Jesuit priest. Kingsley is at his unhappiest and he spends his time drinking, using drugs and having as much sex as he possibly can.One evening Kingsley returns home to hear the piano playing, on further investigation he sees his old friend Søren playing. He is shocked to see him after all this time and wearing his clerics. Søren tells Kingsley that he has found the women they always dreamed of whilst at St Ignatius but she is in trouble and needs his help...Kingsley has also found the perfect building to build his BDSM club and battles the leader of a religious cult for its purchase. Thus the 8th Circle is born!This has to be one of my favourite books in the whole of the Original Sinners series. Just when I thought I couldn't love Kingsley anymore, I absolutely loved him all over again. I love the verbal exchange between him and Søren, I laughed till I cried with this book. An absolute masterpiece from what is fast becoming one of my favourite authors. The attention to detail, the development of the characters, plot progression - it's all there. Some bits are repeated but then there are parts of this book where they cross over form other time lines in the other books but I could never get bored of the Søren/Kingsley relationship. A definite good read!!

Well… if I hear the word imperious spoken in real life, I may just have to scream. Choose another adjective Ms. Reisz! I’m overloaded on it.Soren's God complex in this one peed me off a little and I have to say, I began reading with a fear the "White Years" might not provide any new information but would merely be regurgitations of stuff we learned about in the "Red Years". In this book, however I actually began to see a new side to Elle/Nora while reading about what an utter pig her father was. A lot about her has begun to make sense.This series is so, so heavy on the history that you do begin to wonder which bit of which part of their lives you've read in which book. It all gets tangled up. I noticed a continuity issue or two and forgave them because this is such a long series. I’m really sticking with these books because I want to know how it ends, but I skipped some sections, I admit.I rolled my eyes during some of the scenes, like where Elle is fooling around with another student at college. Yeah she did it, but I didn’t need the deets. Also, when she's with Nico… I didn’t care for the sex scenes in this book. I mostly enjoyed the tender moments Soren and his Eleanor shared, such as the funeral and the moment he finally tells her he loves her. Little bits like that were good but overall, I found this book slow and lacking the same expansive dynamics of the "Red Years". I guess I was lucky to find this series at a time when all the books were out and available to read one after the other. This is also proving to be a con though too – because the books are all beginning to feel very samey. The "White Years" seems to be taking readers down the path of "yes, you did interpret all this stuff correctly… but here it is just in case you wondered…"I wonder who pushed for more books, the agent or publisher?

At the start of the earlier series - The Red Years - I was one of the few people that seemed to have a love hate relationship with Soren, priest & Father figure, sadist & lover - it all seemed so wrong. Then as the follow on books are read and their stories unfold, Tiffany Reisz leads us deeper and deeper into each of her main and subsidiary character's pasts. Cause and effects that led them to where they all were at the end of The Red Years, well, by this time I had had a complete about turn regarding each character. I had a better understanding of, coma to care for, and even love each of the characters Ms Reisz so carefully and cleverly reveals to us in her twisting, twisted and enthralling story.So, here I was in The White Years and going back in time to first meetings...some may think oh no, not a rerun of the past...but no, not exactly, here you get the depth as well as breadth of events, the minutiae of events and the ultimate cause and effect on each of their lives...but it seems to try to prepare and lead the reader to a tragedy...and at each twist and turn, the apparent reveal, I found myself saying no, not that, you can't...but writers can and do, they can reveal so you hate, they can reveal so you change your mind, they can reveal so you love and then dash you to the worst case scenario and leave you fearful of reading on and finding the truth.That is precisely what Ms Reisz has done here. I have shed many tears through this story, tears for Eleanor/Elle/Nora, for Soren, for poor Wyatt and all the poor Wyatt's who end as he, for mothers and father figures. I also stood at a lake once as Nora does and found the scene very emotional for me and cathartic.In summary, Tiffany Reisz has gone on developing her skills as a writer and in my opinion has to be amongst the best of this genre and those of relationships, no matter how different or obscure they may seem to us in our daily lives. The truth is real life is still stranger than fiction but in The Saint Ms Reisz is getting there.Has to be 5 stars plus from me. I will read The King soon, but my emotions need a short break first.