Praise
I can only describe this as sacrificial beautiful sorrow. Through out the whole thing I could feel despair for Dolores's duty and depth of devotion. That feeling you get in your chest and throat right before you cry, where your breath sucks in is how this felt. Right on the edge of that at all times. It was sadness and hopelessness and a hauntingly beautiful truth. And the devotion in the darkness was so powerful. I am not religious. The exact opposite to be exact but I felt this story deeply. Religion can be something exquisite even if it is not a concept i can experience myself. A truly Stunning story of the righteousness of people put in power and the desecration of the will of their god. Watching her slow decline after eating so many sins not of her own was like a wreck you can't look away from. You have to bare witness to it. Wonderfully done.
First things first thank you to Willa Kade and Inspire Official for providing me with an ARC copy!
I’m not sure what I was expecting when I started this ARC. I’m still a little shell shocked from the way things unfolded. This book is hauntingly beautiful. At first I had a little trouble getting into it because there’s not a ton of backstory on the characters. But then all of a sudden I was racing to finish the pages to find out what happens next. The plot, the writing, the characters they’re hauntingly beautiful. The pacing was on point, and that ending. Absolutely satisfying.
OMG, what a beautiful read indeed of this one!
First of all, thank you for the ARC in exchange of my honest review. As a die hard fan of gothic, romance with such dark atmospheric storytelling, as well as discovering and diving more into the complexity of characters and life, I must say that this book successfully blended all of those into its plot and make everything flows, smoothly. It’s also included faith (and the dark side of its believers) - where the story happens in a Church, well obviously - as connected to the book title itself.
Upon reading, I immediately fall in love with how the author express the beauty of the language via the writings, adding with the atmospheric storytelling, yeah, absolutely hooked me up to read from start to finish, and giving me such wonderful satisfaction as well during the whole reading. It’s exquisitely dark and poetic, definitely my favourite kind of reading.
It’s also a delightful slow burn kind of romance between the MMC and FMC, and I do love how the characteristics of each characters being place and highlighted in each scenes, even though they’re just the side characters, but we can get them fully, as well. Like how they’re actually like despite how they show they are in public, and whatnot. Reading the whole story also reminds me of the familiarity or even things that we can totally relate with some communities that we’ve known in real life, regarding complexities of life and ruins, faith, humanism and beings, psychology and all. The plot pace and emotional touches in this book are nicely match with everything that occurs, gripping, even when there’s no rush or when my blood’s been boiling too, or when the scenes touches my heart.
Aside from that, as a non Catholic and English as my second language - I’ve learned a lot regarding the way of the Church, as well as the languages around it (both English and Latin), aside from variety of other words I’ve added to learned into my vocabulary which I found had been beautifully use in each sentences too, I really love that.
Overall, this is such a wonderful reading for me. I’m looking forward to read more from Willa Kade next! 🖤