Blog Tour Interview & Review: The Saint – Tiffany Reisz

You dropped out of a conservative seminary- this must have been some of the influence for THE SAINT! Any priest or nuns you think are secretly reading the series?

I was actually at a Methodist seminary, not Catholic. But I have a Twitter follower who told me about a group of nuns he knows who read and share my books. Also a fan wrote me to tell me she found my books on her brother’s Kindle. This was funny to her because her brother is a Catholic priest. 

Can you give readers a sneak peek at all for THE KING?

We learn in The Mistress that ten years after Kingsley and Søren went their separates ways in high school, Kingsley gets himself shot in the line of duty and nearly dies in a hospital in Paris. Søren, Kingsley’s “next of kin” shows up and scares the doctors into saving Kingsley’s life instead of letting him die. At the beginning of The King, Kingsley is physically but not emotionally recovered from his brush with death. He’s tried to start a new life in Manhattan. He owns a strip club and he’s making friends and enemies in his own special way. And then…in the middle of the night…he hears someone in his house, someone playing his grand piano in the music room, someone Kingsley was certain he’d never see again…

THE SAINT seems to illicit reactions on both ends of the spectrum from readers. Did you set out intending to both shock and entice?

I’ll preface my answer by saying I’ve never written anything that has shocked me. So writing to shock others is very difficult since I don’t perceive my own writing as shocking. I do know, however, that something I write might annoy or offend someone. The Saint tells the story of an unusual 15-year-old girl who falls in love with her new priest and pursues him romantically and sexually going so far as to strike a bargain with him guaranteeing he’ll have to sleep with her. Eleanor’s (she’s Eleanor in prequels, Nora in the present-day books) deal with the devil ends up being her saving grace as her priest refuses to have sex with her until she’s an adult. In the meantime you have several years worth of dancing around each other, of sexual tension, of getting to know each other, pushing each other’s buttons. They’re destined to be together. I’m the writer so I can say that definitively. So yes, I definitely set out to entice since the sexual tension is the most enjoyable part of any romance. 

To be clear, The Saint details a romantic, sexual, and kinky relationship between a teenage girl and her Catholic priest. So if that’s not something a reader doesn’t want to read about, they shouldn’t read it. 

Before she became Manhattan’s most famous dominatrix, Nora Sutherlin was merely a girl called Eleanor…

Rebellious, green-eyed Eleanor never met a rule she didn’t want to break. She’s sick of her mother’s zealotry and the confines of Catholic school, and declares she’ll never go to church again. But her first glimpse of beautiful, magnetic Father Marcus Stearns—Søren to her and only her—and his lust-worthy Italian motorcycle is an epiphany. Eleanor is consumed—yet even she knows being in love with a priest can’t be right.

But when one desperate mistake nearly costs Eleanor everything, it is Søren who steps in to save her. When she vows to repay him with complete obedience, a whole world opens before her as he reveals to her his deepest secrets that will change everything.

Danger can be managed—pain, welcomed. Everything is about to begin.

Series:  Original Sinners #5
Release Date:  June 24, 2014
Publisher:  Harlequin Mira
Source:  NetGalley
Reviewer:  Sheri
Rating:

Buy the book at:

Sheri’s Thoughts

My first Tiffany Reisz, and it won’t be my last. I know she recommends that the series be read in order and this is technically book five, but I absolutely adored this story. Ms. Reisz grabbed me with Eleanor and her quick wit and her humor just cemented my love. I think it’s because I really connected with Eleanor, she’s a lot like myself when I was a teen, of course I didn’t have a very sexy priest to lust after.

Soren is amazing, he’s hard, caring and willing to do what it takes to help shape Eleanor into the woman she was meant to be even if it’s the hard lesson. During the time when she’s still young, he was this presence that kept her moving forward.

I will be reading the series from the beginning now, because the writing is so well done that I felt everything right alone with Eleanor, and I look forward to seeing how this is done with other characters.

The idea of a priest being sexy and an object of lust might be hard for some, but I wanted to be Eleanor and get to know Soren intimately myself. I really felt for him when it was revealed some of what shaped him, and it added a human layer to a man who almost had godlike status before since we see him through Eleanor’s eyes, and she worships him.

I highly recommend this story to those who’ve read the rest of the series, and recommend starting at the beginning for everyone else.

Tiffany Reisz is the author of the highly acclaimed series The Original Sinners. Her first novel, THE SIREN, won the RT Editor’s Choice Award for Best Erotic Romance of 2012. Slightly shameless, Tiffany dropped out of a conservative Southern seminary in order to pursue a career as a writer. This move, while possibly putting her eternal salvation in peril, has worked out better than she anticipated. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her boyfriend, author Andrew Shaffer.

Website // Twitter // Facebook // Goodreads // Amazon Author Page