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4.34 AVERAGE
4.34 AVERAGE
The love in this series is quite possibly the deepest I’ve ever read. It is so vivid, and alive, and pure, and it feels impossible that these characters aren’t real somewhere, forever loving each other.
“Does it bother me that she loves you? No. God is love. I’m sure you’ve heard that somewhere. When someone loves something, they are acknowledging the God inside that person. It is a spiritual act, loving someone. She sees God in you. So do I.”
This novel is perfectly crafted. It's quite a feat to meld characters plus present and past, viewpoint to viewpoint, and around the world. This time it's near flawless. I'm impressed with this series that manages to defy genre. I'm glad someone is doing it, and I'm glad it's Reisz.
The last 20% of this book I had to take my time to soak up what each character was experiencing after that climatic event. I think I probably can speak for everyone that they would want one night with Soren, who was willing to give up his own life for his everlasting love. Gahh, my heart is torn but slowly mending back together.
I highly recommend this series, although I will say this is my first series that releases the sequels first before the upcoming prequels, I understand the reason behind that.
This book has truly left my jaw hanging & left me an addict who needs her next fix. Thank you Tiffany Reisz.
So upon opening this one my first thought was, this better be good. Good it was…great it wasn’t. This book is filled with so many flashbacks that I found myself getting bored and wanting to get on with the current story lines. I understood the reasoning behind the constant flashbacks on Nora’s end as she tries to bargain for her life and give her friends time to find her. However the flashbacks don’t stop at Nora and that’s where it became tiresome to me. There was so much rehashing that the current story arc gets lost.
This series is one you have to throw all preconceived notions out the window with. Everyone will always sleep with everyone else, regardless of who they love. So be prepared for married people to sleep around and people to have multiple partners in each book. It’s kind of hard to shock me at this point, and it felt like Reisz wasn’t even trying to this go around. Sure there are some revelations and some very high tension situations but by the time they come to pass I was kind of over it. I enjoyed all the sexiness of the current story lines but the flashbacks I could have done without.
I think my favorite aspect of this book is that FINALLY we get to see how much Soren cares for Nora and what he is willing to do in order to ensure her safety. He is such a stoic character who is flawed in so many ways that I found him hard to connect with. I could never really figure him out or feel the depth of his emotions in regards to Nora. The Mistress finally let me into his mind and his actions definitely speak louder then words. Wesley gets his own happy ending, and while it felt rushed I was happy for him in the end.
At the end of The Mistress I am content with the direction that each character seems to be taking. Everyone seems to have ended up exactly where I thought they would and in that respect I felt Reisz did them justice. The series isn’t over, there are three more books coming but according to the authors website the next will be more in line with a prequel and I doubt I will continue on. Or at the very least I won’t be in a hurry to read it. I have no need to read about 15 year old Nora with her Priest. If at some point they come back to the present, I will be back in full force.
I give The Mistress by Tiffany Reisz 3 stars!
When we last saw our dear and delightful Nora in The Prince, she had just been taken hostage by a deranged ghost. A person long thought dead by Soren and Kingsley has reappeared and has only one thing on their mind: vengeance. Our not-so-dead ghost also has a fondness for story time. And who better to tell stories than Nora? Through her stories, we become privy to some of Nora’s - and thus Soren, Kingsley, and Wesley’s – most intimate moments.
And each one of our beloved Sinners are put through hell in this book. Their worlds are shaken up, threatened, and we have to sit by and watch them struggle and suffer. See how they handle it. Who they turn to, what they do... Grief and fear cause some interesting reactions in them. Some very, very interesting reactions…
The scenes – both present and past – between Nora, Kingsley, and Soren are the heart of this tale. Seeing the history, the love, between Nora and Soren or Kingsley and Soren… finding out exactly why Nora and Kingsley have a love/hate relationship… was all very tender and beautiful and complicated. These three have one wild, passionate, all-consuming love.
Plus, I will take each and every sentence said by or about Soren and treasure them with all my heart. Soren is, quite simply, amazing. Over the course of this series, he has been a lot of things—intimidating, provoking, dark and compelling. Sexy (oh, so, sexy!). An enigma that I’m compelled to figure out. With each book, a little more of him has been revealed. The Mistress is no exception. And while Soren is still very much a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma—he’s become more human. More flesh and blood. No matter how perfect I think he is, he’s still fallible. Especially since Nora is his biggest weakness.
There are a lot of points-of-views in this story—Nora, Kingsley, Wesley, Grace (Zach’s wife), and Laila (Soren’s niece). Usually too much view point switching leaves me feeling a bit schizophrenic and disjointed but, honestly, I cared for each characters story within the story. I wasn't sure that I'd care for Grace or Laila but I did. Laila in particular, since she had a unique view and insight on Nora and Soren. Each view truly added to the story, it didn't detract or distract.
The Mistress was emotional, engaging, suspenseful, sexy—you name it, Reisz gives it to us. Since The Mistress is the final book in this particular story arc, I will say that I am 99% happy with the way things end. One not-so-small part has me wriggling in my seat, anxious and sad and worried and generally discomfited. Okay, kind of depressed too. But also oddly happy. (You’ll see what I mean…) Miz Reisz absolutely kills me with the ending. She always does, so I shouldn’t be surprised. I'd say that she's evil if I didn't enjoy it so much. I love the way her mind works, how she never gives us what we expect—but always exactly what we need. That sums up The Mistress for me almost perfectly.
Now bring on The Priest!
Favorite Quote:
Outside the bedroom, he was all euphemisms and elegance. Once she started “sharing his bed,” she discovered the gentleman outside the bedroom turned into a savage inside it, inside her. Sex with Soren was raw, brutal and merciless, and she’d loved it, reveled in it, couldn't get enough of it, enough of him.
-- A Romantic Book Affairs Review.
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A few times I have read a series and gotten to the last book and thought Uggg…had I known that was going to happen I wouldn’t even have bothered with this series *looks at Kathleen Turner series and just shakes head*. This book had an event that might have done that for me, I’m still upset with one little facet of this book that left a huge bad taste in my mouth but alas Tiffany Reisz dragged me into the rest of the story so completely that I’m not at all sorry that I read this series and I will still recommend it to others who want to walk on the dark and wild side. (I will however vent about said event in the spoiler tag at the bottom.)
“Because there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you, Eleanor. Nothing I wouldn’t do to help you. And nothing I wouldn’t do to save you. Nothing.”
The Mistress picks up right where The Prince ended, Nora has been taken and now Kingsley and Søren are desperately trying to work out how to find her as quickly as possible. It also seems they will have an abundance of help as every vanilla person they know shows up on Kingsley’s doorstep. Wes, has come to be involved and even though he hates Søren they seem to be able to find some common ground. The conversations between Wes and Søren and Wes and Kingsley were some of my favorites. Søren is truly once of the most complex male leads I’ve read and his complete unselfish love of Nora is amazing.
“Kingsley...you trust him, right?” Wesley asked, not sure he trusted the man at all. “With my life,” Søren said, still not looking at him. “Do you trust him with hers?” “Same answer,” Søren said. “Same question.”
Kingsley was really the man to take charge of the situation. With Søren devastated by Nora’s situation, the Frenchman really takes charge of the situation and does so with his usual humor and flare for the dramatic. I loved getting more backstory of the relationship between he and Nora and I really enjoyed how he laid it out for Wesley.
“Our Nora has a magic pussy. It’s the opposite of the Bermuda Triangle. Lost men sail into it and then find themselves.”
Did I mention that I totally love that they called themselves out on this. The whole time I’m sitting there wondering what is so great about Nora that all these men drop to their knees for her and are helplessly in love with her. But there it is right there, magic pussy.
I still liked both The Angel and The Prince much better than this book. They flowed a little more smoothly and events didn’t seem so far out of the realm of possibility. The Mistress starts feeling a little clunky at times with the extra PoVs and flashbacks, some of which were repeats. In all of the other books we only have two competing PoVs but in the Mistress there are FIVE and it got a little distracting. A few characters seemed just shoved in there. I really never felt like Grace should have been in this story at all and why she was given a PoV is really beyond me, but there is more on that in my spoiler tag below.
There is also Laila, Søren’s niece, entering into the story. I knew immediately ‘why’ she was there but she also was able to shed light onto Nora and Søren’s relationship when they were allowed to be out in the open with one another. Her memories of their past visits to Denmark really opened up what their relationship would have been if he wasn’t a priest. Her memories of overheard conversations and muttering of love a devotion to each other were absolutely beautiful.
I know you’re hurting. Don’t be afraid to hurt me, too. I know you want to let go. Let go with me. You need comfort. Let me comfort you with my body. Lose yourself inside me. Forget what you’ve lost, forget what you can’t have. There’s no shame in trying to forget for a night even if you know you’ll remember in the morning.
And finally Nora, she must decide for sure if she survives who would she pick to be with. Will she choose the dutiful innocent and extremely vanilla Wes, or does she choose the enigmatic and unconditional love of Søren who may hurt her but never harms her. Søren knows all her faults, shortcomings and kinkcomings and loves her all the more for them…hmmm how will she choose. The touching moments she shares with Søren made me tear up and I became a complete emotional wreck for a little time. It was so beautiful and heartfelt and amazing that I was just wrapped up in these characters and I really didn’t want it to end.
And for those reasons above I still loved this series overall and I won’t let the one thing that I really hated deter that. Søren, Kingsley, Griffin and even Nora made a most interesting tale. I have thought about this book a lot since I finished so I will say that it totally sticks with you and it did invoke a lot of emotions in me.
I do recommend this series to anyone that likes BDSM, Erotica or even someone who wants to press their boundaries and want a Great Story along with the smut.
And Now……On to the rant.
Spoiler
1st
Okay… so this book is only over the course of a few days…Nora is kidnapped and held captive. Søren is so distraught over her abduction and then Grace shows up.
Why is Grace even in this book! She was a little blip on the map in the first two books. I think she literally got three sentences in the second book and now she gets an entire PoV. All the important dialogue that Søren had with her could have easily been split between Laila, Kingsley and Wes possibly even Daniel. It seemed like this huge plot device just so Tiffany Reizs could shove in a trick to give it this OHHH ending. However I didn’t feel OHHH at all I just felt WTF…seriously. It seemed so out of character for Søren to have actual intercourse with Grace. They knew each other for 3-5 days…. 3-5 days and you are going to try and make me believe that he made Nora wait 5 years for them to have sex and Kingsley and he went something like 15 years but Grace’s freckles are like kryptonite and he gave up on his ‘sex, is special and should only be shared with someone you love’ I didn’t buy it. It seemed so out of character. He has dominated so many other women and never had sex with them so why he would have done that with Grace was just ugh….all around.
So that was how God answered their prayer to have a baby… Søren is the answer. That way he gets a child he can never truly claim and Nora gets to be his godmother. Anyone else not want to mix in babies with their erotica….or is that just me *raises hand* It wasn’t even a surprise because they started dropping hints early on. Nora prays for you to have a child, I’ve prayed for you 9 times (I’m not Catholic but I guess that is important). Zach said I could have as much fun as I wanted while I’m here, he just doesn’t want to know the details….Well a baby is a hard detail to miss.
I'm so not happy that this seemed to be forced into the story and what now Kingsley’s baby girl and Søren’s baby boy will be best friends and grow up to be in love and start their own BDSM legacy….idk I hate the entire thing.
2nd
Wes, ah my poor Wesley. I loved him in The Siren but since then it has really fallen off. He is so vanilla and I really thought he and Nora together was just ewe. So when I saw Laila in the story I knew she was there for his HEA. A quick and easy out, and it was quick. He has just proposed to Nora yet he meets this chick and then Nora was just a ‘friend’ hmmm. Also they know each other for less than a week and she gives up her virginity to him. I know this is erotica but it seemed a little forced as well.
I did however like Laila’s addition to the story and thought long term she was perfect for Wes’s character.