Sierra Simon

He's a priest, and here is his confession.

There are many rules a priest can't break. A priest cannot marry. A priest cannot abandon his flock. A priest cannot forsake his God. Tyler Bell has had no problem playing by the rules for the last three years after a family tragedy set him on the path to priesthood. That all changes when the delicious, sultry voice of Poppy Danforth sinks its claws in him through the screen of his confessional booth, and he can't get her sins out of his head.

It should be easy to put his impure thoughts of her to rest, considering the vows Tyler has taken. It should be nothing to overcome what the sight and sound of her does to him, when his life with the Church means everything. But once he has his first forbidden taste of those red lips, Tyler can't help but break all his rules for Poppy―no matter what it might cost them both.

Priest

"We have a lot of traditions, including locking each other away, but we don't eat lamb because lambs have never done us any harm and it feels rude to eat them."

I've said this multiple times before but I love stories set in creepy, sentient houses. There's just so much that can be done with the concept of a house and its inhabitants and its conventional associations with a home (for who?), such that there can be so many unique iterations of haunted houses. Also, I know that this book is technically horror but I found the narrators hilarious as they take turns to tell the messed up story of their lives, their mothers' lives, and their grandmothers' lives. Most of all, I really loved how the house itself was alive with rage and hunger, how it paralleled its women, and how all of them needed to be fed. Incredible storytelling. I would read it again.

There are four generations of women who have lived in this house. The first was tricked into marrying a pimp who built his house on the exploitation of other women, writing pain and suffering into its foundations. The second was raised without love but received visions from saints. The third got knocked up young then murdered. The fourth was raised by her hated grandmother until she got old enough to understand the anger and curse (or blessing) she had no choice but to inherit. The origin of their multigenerational misery can be traced back to the Jarabos, the richest family in town. After decades of simmering, it's about time for the pot to boil over.

Loved the smut, but wished there was more depth when it came to characters. Like why do the characters love each other besides it being physical? 

Edna Aviles

It’s okay. The spice wasn’t great. There was no plot

Lizeth Esmeralda

okay so, therapy would be easier for these people 

it’s straight up porn but also weirdly nice depiction of faith and religion ?????? anyways 

Cici Pearson

okay so, therapy would be easier for these people 

it’s straight up porn but also weirdly nice depiction of faith and religion ?????? anyways 

Did not finish, was a bit much for me. Only porn no plot 

Marie

Drew Nerbas

1/15 done!! This book took me absolutely ages to finish but it was worth it, an amazing journey that is setting up an incredible saga to come. I look forward to the remaining 14 (god help me).

Rebecca Hurd

Murder…mystery…and cookies!!!! How can you go wrong!! I can see why this is such a successful series. Enjoyed The Who done it and the cookie recipes!! As a baker I can’t wait to try them!! Great group of characters and Hannah is a great small town sleuth!! Will definitely be reading the rest of the series!!

Shannon C

ploral

prawnie

Okay first of all the prologue had me on the edge of my seat throughout the whole book. Farrah is such a strong lead I’ve read so many books where the lead female lets guys walk over them and this was definitely not the case. Can’t wait to read the sequel.

I read this book nearly a decade ago, and I spent years trying to remember the title, only to find it today through extremely obscure Google searches. In brief, this book is so breathtakingly beautiful, and not just because I'm a sucker for a kindred spirits trope. Dogar manages to interweave complicated themes of ostracism, depression, love, tragedy, family and hope without ever straying into cliched territory. In brief, this book will imprint your heart and mind.

Montse Rangel

Una muy bella recopilación de historias.

Ilham

WTF ????
The end …
I need to read book 2 RN BUT I HAVE SCHOOL IN 30 min
Help
Loved this book

bucky

4.5/75 stars for The Storygraph, rounded up to 5 for Goodreads.
So, I was supposed to finish this book before June so that I could review it before it was published, but I think I speak for so many readers on booktwt when I say that the reading slump last month was HORRENDOUS. Anyway, I finished Heart Throb at like… 1:30 am and spent about two minutes in my car laughing and crying because of how it ended. IN A GOOD WAY!!!
Danielle Bird has absolutely done it again. The release of her first novel and the first book in this series, Drop Dead, gave me the space to fall absolutely head over heels for her characters. Ethan, Simon, and Bill are absolutely some of the most intriguing and fun characters I’ve ever read. I absolutely love Bill, and I wish she were real because I desperately need that woman to adopt me. She has such mother-bear vibes, and I need that in my life. Ethan and Simon, who I’ve been referring to as BloodHunter (think: FirstPrince but for a vampire and an ex-vampire hunter) endearingly, are still the same loveable, multi-dimensional characters that I fell in love with in the first installation of this series.
Bird seems to have a little more fun in this novel. In Drop Dead, we’re faced with the obvious antagonist: vampire hunters. It’s a given. Vampire hunters are the core of antagonistic energy in alignment with the vampire world. While we still have vampire hunters in Heart Throb, they aren’t the only thing we need to worry about.  And, on top of that, Bird gives dimension to characters from the previous book (Darrell, for example), and introduces an entirely new cast, too! Every character, even the ones we’re supposed to hate, is fun and interesting.
I think one of my favorite things about this installment of the series is the plot twist (iykyk). I was positive that I knew where this particular plot point was going, but then Bird makes a point in-text to GASLIGHT YOU OUT OF THINKING IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN!!! I was tricked! And you know what? Danielle woke up to a voice note on Twitter from me crying in my car about how things turned out! Again, the tears were positive (I’m very, very excited to see where the next book goes), but MAN!
Anyway, I think all of this is to say that I love Bird’s writing, and I love these characters, and I cannot wait to keep reading about them.
Thank you to Danielle for the ARC copy of this in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

Nik ✨

I want to start this review off by saying it is evident that this book is the debut novel of a 19 year old, with some parts being a bit choppy or underdeveloped, but that is prefaced with the fact that it does NOT matter because I had such a fun time reading it. 
There are a lot of similar elements in this book to other YA novels featuring a series of trials or competitions, but it still felt fresh and interesting throughout the book. The banter between the FMC and basically anyone she’s with is top tier— extremely well done. I didn’t find myself cringing where I normally would, even when some of the lines felt cheesy because it fit the moment or the character expressing those feels so well. 
Paedyn is relatable and doesn’t suffer from annoying FMC syndrome. Kai is fun, and while I don’t relate to him, I can understand his motivations. The world building isn’t extremely extensive but it doesn’t need to be for the story at hand. It set the scene it was meant to, and I felt immersed enough, even though I would like to know more about the lands outside of the kingdom and how they operate or see the kingdom were placed in. I also developed a love and hatred for secondary characters— they weren’t all just faceless bystanders that had no real role in the story, which is one of my biggest book icks. I could’ve used some more comprehension of the motivations of the queen as well as some of the other competitors. I never really enjoyed the “evil” characters who are there just to be some sort of obstacle for the protagonist. I want to know why they are acting that way. 
The powers are another exciting element to the story. There are some standard powers, like strength and super speed, and then there are other really unique ones that thrilled me. Alongside the romance plot is another plot with privilege dynamics, oppression of marginalized groups, and rebellions. That plot was very enticing to me and evoked a lot of emotion from me. The characters’ feelings and motivations are all easily understood, and I enjoyed how complicated things became when their goals didn’t align with their current emotions. 
Overall, the story lost a star from me just from some of the juvenile writing choices, and I wish the world and characters were fleshed out a bit more, but I had such a great time with this.

carolina

tragique, romantique, fataliste et remplies de mystères ce recueil de lettres résume en lui seul l'atmosphère sinistre mais tellement attirante des écrits de Lemony Snicket.

1.5  ⭐DISCLAIMER!! THIS IS JUST MY OPINION!! 

I am struggling to find the words to describe how much I....disliked this story and did not, at any point, feel anything for these characters. 

The story follows the main character, the narrator, who is a young man from Saint Petersburg who has suffered from extreme loneliness his whole life. One day, on a stroll through the streets of the city, he encounters and falls in love with a young woman, but the love is unrequited since she misses the man she loves, with whom she is ultimately reunited.
Our narrator is a lonely guy with few acquaintances, except for his housekeeper, Matrona. He is sensitive and philosophical (read pathetic and manipulative), looking for feminine admiration, but struggles with feeling isolated. (In other words, he's weird and has never felt a woman's touch.) He's an idealist who believes Nastenka, the young woman he meets and falls in love with in a day?, is the perfect woman he's been searching for his entire life. Nastenka is, similarly to our narrator, an emotional, whimsical, and idealistic young lady. Throughout the story, she is constantly torn between feelings, unable to let go of her lover, whose return she is waiting for. However, she worries that he will never return to her. From there on, the narrator gaslights Nastenka into "being in love with him," and she thinks she loves him, but she doesn't because she's already in love with another. Therefore, under the guise of her confounded feelings, she professes love to the narrator, which in a way leads him on, then forgets about him the instant she reunites with her sweetheart and marries him. A mess. Anyways.... 

I disliked the portrayal of both characters; I found them so whiney and obnoxious that I couldn't wait for the story to end. Not in any moment did I feel or gather any sympathy or other similar emotions for them or the predicament from which they are suffering. You can blame that on either me being a hater to the core or on Dostoyevsky's writing, which I also didn't enjoy much. Also, before I get jumped, I know that one of the points of the story is the rejection of idealism and "living in one's head", but I just don't like the way it's done!

The 0.5 star is thanks to the only thing that I enjoyed, which was the truly sorrowful words that portrayed loneliness beautifully. The language is beautiful, and there are some particular quotes that sound better without knowing the context of the whole story, but that is about it.

Elisavet Rozaki 

This book will definitely train you on habit management. However, it could've been *much* shorter. I found myself skipping sentences because the author was getting repetitive.

Yochanan Vered 

laia

carly smallbird

Like a lot of light novels, this is one where I think I'd enjoy it more as an anime—I can definitely imagine the scenes put to movement and the pacing working pretty well that way. I just struggled a lot with this one because there's pretty much no meaningful tension—it's kind of an "all we do is win" montage, but I think an audiovisual medium's methods of using framing / timing / etc. could probably help underscore some parts a lot better.

(There's also some things that I think are just translation choices I might have done differently—"hee hee" just doesn't read so well in English prose as it would in a comic. I presume that's an "ufufu")

That said, it definitely has its niche; like the author says in the afterword, webnovels are pretty saturated with male power fantasies, so why not a female power fantasy? (I could say that a lot of the antagonists were too horrible to be believable, but I also know the author wrote this out of frustration with sexism in Japan and patterned a lot of stuff off of that, so. I guess I can believe it.) I'm also interested in some of the potential conflict it hints at for the sequel that might prove a little more challenging, and also I'm hoping for more of Katherine Foxxi, who turned out to be one of the more interesting characters, so, hey, even if I think there's room for improvement: I'm still reading the sequel.

Great smut wise! Decent plot but you can tell it’s rushed at the end like the author forgot to write anything other than smut. HOWEVER the internal battle is real, annoying, but real.

Lexi 

Taha

Review
Overall, I found this book to be tedious, boring and at times frustrating. Not much happens for the first half of the book and certain narrative and thematic elements felt ramble-y and without purpose. 

I thought that some of the themes explored were interesting. Particularly the mundanity and brutality of war. I enjoyed how the book was a slice, of a slice, of a slice, of a war. I liked that it was unclear whether the events of the story had any really impact on the the actual tides of the war. I found it to be an interesting way to present the story. I imagine that this experience is common in war, as the "stakes" of an individual battle on the rest of the war is context usually only reserved for storytellers and historians. 

However, all of these themes were explored in ways that felt boring - if you're looking for something that does all of this better, I would recommend the TV Show Andor. It is incredibly well written and explores the same ideas much more effectively.

Very few of the characters in the book are very well fleshed out, which makes the stakes of the book really light. People and conversations feel interchangeable and deaths felt weightless. The writing places the emphasis of events on strange places and certain events that are only referenced feel far more interesting than the actual narrative.

The character of Maria, is an incredibly 1 dimensional in a really frustrating way. She only serves as a narrative love interest for the main character and is the most outrageous example of the "Born Sexy Yesterday" trope I have ever seen.

Recommend to a friend? No
Read again? No
Inspired me to create? No
Filled me with the inescapable dread that I will never be able to make something as good as this? No

Demon

only had to read it for my literature class. I didn’t like it at all, maybe because I didn’t really understand the topic and the story. I didn’t understand what the author wanted to say so it was really disturbing and I couldn’t get into the book at all. It was short but I took so long to read it. 
I don’t say you should not read it, it’s only my opinion! But keep in mind there’s something you need to understand while reading the book, the author wants to say something.

Priest

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