Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Personally, I actually enjoyed this book despite the reviews I read on goodreads. I hadn’t read any reviews before reading so it was nice to go into it with no expectations other than my love for forbidden romance and deeply rooted angst. Both main characters were frustrating in their own ways- they both were absolutely horrible at communicating, the constant miscommunications between them and what they felt was infuriating- but I thought their confusion was really telling of how they truly felt. Tyler was an interesting character in the sense that he says that he was celibate for three years and felt a sense of pride over the fact that he used to be a ‘womanizer� in a way- experimenting freely with sex and his desires when he was younger and in college- and yet almost immediately as he’s introduced to Poppy- indirectly, also, through the screen of the confessional- he’s back to having raging sexual thoughts, unable to resist himself from the temptation even if he punishes himself for it. I liked that he was pretty open with himself in his thoughts, chastising himself even if he wanted to continue, trying to remind himself why he became a priest, why he took those vows. He endures a lot of inner turmoil- which I think would absolutely happen to a man in his position, but he is very quick to push those thoughts out of his head when Poppy is around, and she is always around. When she isn’t, you can tell that Tyler is really digging in deep into the recesses of his mind, trying to form any semblance of reasoning as to why now, why did this woman have to come and ruin so much for him- to tear down everything he had built, for the church, for himself- his own guilt. He cries, he prays, he punishes himself over and over in hopes that god will come to him and help, tell him why he chose him for such a terrible thing. I wish I could’ve seen him be more vulnerable with Poppy- every time there could’ve been a conversation about what was happening between them and why, it turned into something inherently sexual. They would always turn to having sex or *nearly* having sex to get their minds off of it. Naturally, Tyler knew that it worked, so he used his lust and love- or obsession- to cloud their minds and put them into a haze of passion and pleasure. It really got to a point like “damn, this guy isn’t holy at all. I don’t think he ever was,� the guy got hard at every interaction he ever had with her. Poppy wasn’t much better, she was nothing but putty in his holy hands. As soon as his touch became more than just touching, she’d cave and they would do literally anything but talk about what they should’ve. Doing so, they avoided a lot of conversation that could’ve saved them 10 months of pain in the end. Poppy drove me crazy solely for the reason that we couldn’t see much of her own thoughts aside from her confessions and her small part in the epilogue. It was obvious that she had loved him for a while, even though they had barely known each other for what- not even 3 months? I understood that Tyler didn’t quite want to hear that she loved him at the time- he didn’t want to accept the part of him that loved her, that was willing to throw away the love for his religion, his god- but him not hearing her out, just deciding to fuck her on the stairs instead, surely put some kind of doubt in her head. He was always wishy-washy with her, and the only times it seemed he could let some vulnerability slip was when he was literally inside of her. I was VERY scared of the ending at first, I was worried that after everything Tyler went through- leaving his life as a priest, moving, trying to move on from Poppy, literally going through mental hell- he’d resent Poppy for being the main deciding factor behind it all. Sterling felt like a throwaway character, as did his whole blackmail thing with the pictures of Tyler and Poppy kissing. Again, whatever- I guess I understood it, but why the HELL WOULDN’T THEY JUST TALK ABOUT IT?? The fact that Poppy just up and left without saying anything just because she felt bad and thought that he got fired rather than left willingly was SO wildly infuriating considering she had just been saying she loved him about 80 million times. And the KISS with Sterling??? Because she said she felt like she “had to� ????? At that point Tyler didn’t even care about the blackmail, he had already pretty much announced him leaving the church at the mass he had done THAT MORNING that she was at. Anyways, 10 months of Tyler literally hating himself and trying to do ANYTHING to distract himself from Poppy, he finds her again and it’s like all is well immediately. Kinda crazy. Fucked in a random church and talked about God looking down and being there with them and all that shit. Yeah, yeah, they both still loved each other but damn gimme some angst. Gimme some nights over the phone drunk crying and begging for forgiveness, gimme some showing up unannounced- which he technically did, he only randomly found her inside of a church in the new town she lived in- and groveling on your knees. But noooo it was all “I’m sorry I thought I had to I was guilty� blah blah. A teeny tiny part of me hoped that he DID hold some resentment, queen deserved it. Nonetheless, I did like that they got married in the end lol, I’m a sucker for a happy ending and I think that those horny, freaky, fake holy mfs were perfect for each other. Smut was deliciously taboo, and I LOVED reading the mental anguish that Tyler was going through. I’m not religious myself, but I felt myself nodding along to some of the things Tyler thinks about.