The Siren (The Original Sinners, #1)
The Siren (The Original Sinners, #1) by Tiffany Reisz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Not sure how to review this one. I read it on kindle and highlighted a ton of passages. So it's a story where I loved the poetry of the words, as much as the prose of the story. And the characters, as well.
A bit of a mess relationship wise at the beginning. I found myself expecting enough of a romance that there would be a dominant couple, but there wasn't. There was Nora, a writer, professional mistress, and former collared slave; Zach, her new editor, a recent British ex-pat; Grace, Zach's estranged wife; Wesley, Nora's virginal college student intern; Soren, Nora's former master, the head dominant in the local BDSM community, and a priest. Then there was William and Caroline, the master and slave in Nora's book within a book.
This book is about relationships forming, breaking up, and reforming. And it ends not with a note of finality, but of a lull between books.
I quoted a ton, but the two that stuck with me the most are the one about hurt (physical damage) vs harm (emotional damage) and the one about erotica being more akin to horror than romance.
Looking forward to the next book in the series.
And some of the quotes I like. Order is how they were listed on Goodreads. Forgive any typos, I didn't proof them all.
*****
"God, I love a man with a big vocabulary."
*****
"I know people think erotica is just a romance novel with rougher sex. It's not. If it's a subgenre of anything, it's horror."
"Horror? Really?"
"Romance is sex plus love. Erotica is sex plus fear."
*****
“If you come back to me," he said, making a rare concession, "will you run or crawl?"
Nora had pressed her whole body into him at that moment. Resting her head on his strong shoulder, she watched as a tear forged a river down his long and muscled back.
"I'll fly.”
*****
“We can only sacrifice so much of ourselves in a relationship before there's nothing left to love or be loved.”
*****
"I'm no optimist", she said as she opened the cabinet door. "I'm just a realist who smiles too much."
*****
"Kid, Søren could eat you for breakfast and not even need to chew. Don’t ever fuck with a sadist, Wesley. For Søren, torture’s just foreplay."
"Why did you stay with him?" he’d whispered.
Nora had grinned at him, and she saw a new fear in Wesley’s sweet brown eyes.
"I like foreplay."
*****
"Hurt but do not harm?" Zach asked. "What's the difference?"
"Hurt is a bruise on the outside." Nora sipped her mineral water delicately. "Harm is a bruise on the inside. If you’re a masochist, pain feels like love to you. Not being hurt is what hurts."
*****
“Tell me something boss. What do you think is the highest form of art?"
"Literature," he answered without hesitation. "Painters and sculptors require elaborate supplies and tools. Dancers must have music. Musicians must have instruments. Literature needs nothing but a voice to speak it or sand to scrawl it in."
*****
"It's not morning until you're awake. And it's not night until you're asleep in your bed under my roof. And I could go on and on but hope is a horrible thing, and I love you too much to give you any."
*****
"K-dar," Nora said and tapped the side of her nose. "Kinksters can smell it on each other."
*****
"She seemed like the type of woman who'd help you forget about your headache by setting your bed on fire."
*****
"S&M is as psychological as it is physical and sexual, Zach. Imagine being as deep inside a woman’s mind as you are inside her body."
*****
"Vanilla people were so cute sometimes."
*****
"A love story is not the same as a romance novel. A romance novel is the story of two people falling in love against their will. This is a story of two people who leave each other against their will. It starts to end the minute they meet."
*****
"It's like a gay man being married to a straight woman. No matter how much he loves her, it's a sacrifice every moment they're together. The sex is secondary to the sacrifice."
*****
"Excuse me," Zach began, trying to regain control of this conversation, "but didn't I repeatedly insult you this morning?"
"Your kvetching was very fetching. I like men who are mean to me. I trust them more."
*****
"If only there were more yesterdays instead of so many todays."
******
"He saved up her pain, counted it like currency and the more pain she endured, the more pleasure she could buy with it."
*****
"Stop writing what you know and start writing what you want to know."
*****
"Words are the thread in the fabric of the universe."
*****
"The eyes might be the windows to the soul, but a man's hips were his seat of power."
*****
"When Søren touched her she became his. When Wesley touched her, she became herself."
*****
"Adrift and unmoored, she had tried again and again to throw him a rope to save him from the raging waters. And now he no longer felt like a drowning man at sea. Nora ... the siren and the goddess, the ship and the wine-dark sea. She would either save him or end him."
*****
"The same wind that blows us off course can turn and carry us home."
*****
"Let me show you what life is like lived in the moment. No past, no future, just the one perfect moment you're standing in and there's no guilt and there's no shame and there's absolutely nothing to be afraid of ...."
*****
"Nothing. I wanted to hit him but hitting a masochist is pretty pointless."
"Wesley?” She finally looked him full in his face. For a moment his brown eyes turned silver and she saw Michael’s face floating in front of her. "What if I’m a bad person, too?"
"You’re not a bad person. If you were a bad person you wouldn’t be sitting fully dressed in a bathtub with no water in it because you’re terrified you might be a bad person. The devil doesn’t worry about going to hell."
"Only because he’s already there."
*****
"I became obsessed with the one question-when was it, when were we, irrevocable? When did all the little tumblers fall into place and our fate was locked in and it became impossible for us to be anything other than what we became? When was the guilty moment?"