Review by feminist_reader - Forgive Me Father

feminist_reader 's review for:

Forgive Me Father by Katerina St Clair

challenging dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I have been on the hunt for a good priest romance. This is a taboo romance that has always interested me and unfortunately my hunt seems to have to persist. The angst that could come out of this story especially when it is a priest and alter women but we got none of that.

I will say I loved the art of this book and art within the book is beautiful and I like this new theme in books of having character art within the book.

I found the main relationship to be very lacklustre. This was a blink and you missed it type of build up and insta lust story. Now I’m a reader that doesn’t mind if the relationships starts out as a lusty relationship because that is reality for some people. However, I still need a level of build up with the relationship and for the to romance progress. In this book I felt like there was non of that. There was no depth to the relationship that was developing. For me ultimately this was just to very traumatised people perpetuating their trauma.

This book suffers from this weird effect of having to include/mentions of CSA and SA to make this dark.

I don’t know why there’s this trend of books especially dark romances including CSA, SA and Human trafficking into their books. It’s like ever since Haunting Adeline every dark romance put it in as a subplot. It feels a little disingenuous. I also do not think that this topic was handled very well and if you are going to include something that is one of the vilest crimes in humanity and horrifying still relevant to this day you have a duty to not make it so surface level or throw in there. It felt like the author was like how I can make this dark and just throw stuff at a wall and waiting to see what might stick.

The mental health aspect of the FMC is not really thought through and if I’m being honest I felt offended as someone who has similar struggles to the FMC.

Throughout the book that she has scars from self harm all through her body and that she still has the overwhelmed to self harm and I feel like sometimes these authors are putting these dark things in there and going well it will be solved because the MMC is going to have kinky sex which is gonna Stop her self harming and that is just disgusting for me. Now this may not have been the authors intention but as a reader that is what I gathered from the writing. Which just means the use of writing and the authors intention was not clearly communicated.

This book was just violence and abuse toward the FMC through out and author gave us no time to breath. It was either violence or sex.

If I’m being honest there is not real semblance of a plot. The plot is like spaghetti and it’s just randomly placed. This happens so quickly I felt like I was getting whiplash. I could not tell you what the actual plot was

I also think that authors need to stop putting kink into their books just because they perceive it as dark. This book perpetuates the harmful stereotypes of kink. The kink and kinky sex used in this book are dangerous and harmful

Content Warnings