aleksandrareading 's review for:

4.0

4.5/5

I'm in my Fleabag era, because I read three books with priests as main characters in a month. But, most importantly, W H Y I haven’t discovered this author sooner. It’s my second book in a row from K.A Merikan and I’m obsessed with her stories.

This story takes place in Poland, pretty close to where I live honestly so that’s maybe why I felt so connected to it. Let me tell you, the author pictured Polish small town community perfectly. Usually authors writing about Poland use your typical polish names and surnames, but here it didn’t happened. K.A Merikan even used polish proverb with 'grosz', our currency, and I screamed. Research has been done really well preparing for this book and I'm very happy about that, because usually authors use typical, mostly untrue, stereotypes, and that's not what happened in this case. Polish folklore and Slavic culture is literally fascinating, and reading about it in a romance book was amazing.

Let's get back to the story thoughbecause it was quite a ride. Big city, fresh from finishing his studies priest Adam is sent to a really small village in Bieszczady for six months after he was found with erotic magazines with men to 'change'. Thats where he meets Emil, the local man who looks like he step out of some rock magazine, with shit ton of issues and something which can’t take Adam away from him. The story might seems like normal small town romance from the start, but just wait and see that 'normal' is probably the least word I would use for this book. Adam tries to acclimate in a new place, but after some time he realizes that his mother warnings about this village being cursed, might be true. I’m not gonna spoiler here, so just trust me it only gets creepier and weirder from here.

Read trigger warnings, because there are some stuff which some will probably find disturbing, but later after all the secrets are revealed, they just make sense.

I really like both main characters, they were both so unique, which I adore in books, because reading about two different people falling in love is something I will never get tired of. They could probably be the definition of soulmates. Like seriously.

"He would never love anyone the way he loved Adam, and life would torture him with it forever."

"His place was here, in Dybukowo, with Emil at his side, bound to the mountains forever."


The relationship between them has its ups and downs, mainly because Adam, being a priest brought up in a very religious family, was hesitant at first and quite mean to Emil and his advances, but that didn't last very long.


It’s definitely not my last book from this author, because I love books when I have those "oh shit I wasn’t expecting that" moments. There is a second book in this series, but the cover puts me off reading it a bit. We will see tho, maybe I will read it one day. Anyway, I can highly recommend this one!