priest + midnight mass by sierra simone - review and thoughts ༉‧₊˚✧
SPOILER WARNING: this review contains spoilers from priest and midnight mass by sierra simone!
whew, okay. i read these two books right after each other, both within the same day. safe to say i loved both of them!
priest was honestly a five star read for me. the pacing, the tension, the characters, and tyler's inner struggle with himself and with god really resonated with me. i thought it was really beautiful how the author portrayed tyler and poppy's love as sacred and in a sense, holy, by exploring the relationship between god's endless love and interpretations on the catholic church's teachings. while we know that tyler must retain his vow of celibacy as a priest, us as the readers don't feel as though he's doing something wrong in the eyes of god because of the way he's describing the feeling of absolute euphoria, love, and connection between him and poppy. we know he's breaking his vow, but in tyler's [and by default, our's too] interpretation of god, we do not see this as a direct act of sin. i think this book was five stars for me because i genuinely could not think of any plot, and the plot twist was SO gut wrenching for me i had to put my kindle down and pace around my room. not only was the romance explored, but we had actual character growth with both poppy and tyler (though i do think tyler had the best and most character growth).
after finishing priest, i was SO overjoyed to find out that there was a continuation to poppy and tyler's story. so obviously i start reading! first of all, the smut was phenomenal, chefs kiss. with this book, we really kinda saw poppy's spoiled-only-child side come through, and we're reminded how much of a spoiled-only-child she is. was this intentional? i don't know, but it did irk me at times how different she was acting about the gala and whatnot when just last book she was saying she hated those things. apart from that, there was also the miscarriage subplot, which i think was soooooo quickly skimmed over that it shouldn't have been in the book in the first place. i understand that the author wanted to put it in there to demonstrate the difficulties of marriage, but poppy and tyler were already having marital problems due to his phd and poppy's gala stuff, i felt as though the miscarriage was an unnecessary element that was simply put in to exacerbate the problems they already had. overall, i did love how they overcame everything as a united front, but i do think poppy's character was a little annoying in this book
overall, definitely recommend this duo to those who are thinking about reading it!
