Review: The Queen by Tiffany Reisz

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

You’ve read THE SIREN, yes? The first book in Tiffany Reisz’s Original sinners series?

If not, you’ll do best to make for your local library or bookstore and grab yourself a copy well before you approach THE QUEEN. This particular book is the eighth and final volume in the series, and you’ll experience 98% less confusion if you've already read the seven that go before it.

I know, I know. It’s a lot of homework, but it’s good homework and you’ll have a blast with it--unless you object to kinky, character-driven erotica with a strong religious component, in which case you’re probably best off reading something else.

If sexy times and religious discussion sounds awesome to you, though, you’ve gotta get your hands on this series. Let me explain the appeal of this final volume, sans spoilers for the earlier books.

THE QUEEN [Amazon | The Book Depository] is a direct sequel to THE VIRGIN and picks up shortly after the earlier book’s finale. It employs the same structure as the rest of the four-volume White Years subseries: a present-day framing story surrounds Nora’s recollections of what occurred in the years immediately before THE SIREN. The framing story takes place at the wedding we learned about in THE VIRGIN, while the core story picks up immediately after Nora’s return to Manhattan and details how she transforms herself from a well-known submissive into the Red Queen of the Underworld.

And if that makes no sense to you whatsoever, please refer to paragraphs one through three of this review.

Review: The Virgin by Tiffany Reisz

THE VIRGIN is the third book in Tiffany Reisz’s White Years sequence and the seventh Original Sinners novel overall. Like the previous books in the subseries, it’s a prequel wrapped in a present day framing story; and like all the rest, you’ll enjoy it most if you’ve already read everything that came before it.

That’s your mission, friends. Find yourself a copy of THE SIREN. Read it. Move along to THE ANGEL. Proceed in publication order from there, with occasional breaks to read the various short stories set in this captivating world. And once you're primed and ready, you can start THE VIRGIN.

Yeah, yeah; I know it seems like I’m asking a lot, expecting you to read six other books so you can read this one, but trust me: it’s worth it. You’re gonna have a hell of a good time. Just see if you don't.

So, yes. This book. THE VIRGIN begins in 2015, the night before a wedding often described as "Nora’s." Everyone needs a break from the stress of event-planning (and partner-satisfying), so Nora, Søren, and Kingsley hole up together and trade stories of the year they all spent apart after Nora left Søren. Which is to say, Nora describes the most exciting parts of her time in her mother’s convent (which: nun sex and writerly shenanigans), Kingsley tells the other two how he met Juliette (which: beach-moping and hot-lady-wooing), and Søren listens.

It’s a structure designed to hook the reader right off the bat. Of course we want to know whose wedding it is (I guessed right! Hurray!). Of course we want to know what went on with Nora and Kingsley during the year nobody ever talks about. Of course we’re gonna dive straight in and come up for air as seldom as possible.

The story proper is packed with Reisz’s trademark blend of hot-ass sexy times and emotional payoff. Everyone has lots of kinky, enjoyable sex. Everyone fosters deep connections with people, some of whom they sleep with and some of whom they don’t. I live for this, y’all. Give me a book packed with kinky bisexuals who feel a lot of things and I’m a happy girl indeed.