ARC received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a new author for me, and I though the premise sounded interesting. There aren’t too many lesfic books about nuns out there. I was expecting some sort of slow burn story with two women becoming friends and the one who was a nun being torn between her faith and her desire for another woman. This is not that book.

First the characters of Maggie and Alex aren’t well fleshed out, Maggie is a nun who teaches, Alex is in construction, is supposed to be a player (although there’s little evidence of this) and is gay. That’s pretty much the character development. The only other character that’s really given any sort of story is the Mother Superior, and it didn’t make her (or Maggie) any more sympathetic.

I honestly didn’t care about either character. They didn’t know each other long enough before jumping into bed for me to believe in their relationship and it seemed all about sex and not much substance, which I think would be required for a life change like Maggie goes through.

If all you want is two characters going at it all the time and that’s made more interesting by one of them being a nun, this should do it. I wanted more depth to the characters and their interactions, and was disappointed. The writing and dialogue are also very choppy, I just couldn’t get into the style of writing. 2 stars.

Everything I disliked about the book is in the spoiler tag (which contains major spoilers) on Goodreads because it’s impossible to say what I didn’t like without revealing the plot.

I’d be lying if I said this book didn’t have me all excited from the moment I found out MJ was writing a book about a nun falling for a butch contractor. I mean come on… in what world is that not a massive turn on.

Maggie is a nun and clearly a lesbian. She fantasises about one of her parishoners, Alex who is butch and doesn’t like to play fast and hard with her heart. She likes to keep things light with no strings attached but there is something about Maggie that has got her in a tailspin but really, she has no right falling for a nun anyway, right?

The plot of the book is really clever and the knowledge of the church was unbelievable. I grew up catholic and there are things I wasn’t even aware of. The amount of angst given to this book is completely fair because well, she’s breaking her vows at every turn and lying about it.

One of this things I feel is missing from the book is Alex’s point of view as the book is told soley from Maggies. There were times I wondered how Alex was feeling about certain aspects of their relationship and had to wait it out until it was mentioned instead of having access to her inner thoughts.

With all MJ Williamz’ novels there are heaps of smokin’ sex scenes and this book is certainly no different. In fact I’m not sure a chapter went by where these two didn’t get it on. And let me tell you, it was HOT! I don’t think I will ever look at a nun again in the same way.

If you’re looking for something to fall into and enjoy for fun, this is the book for you. It’s not too serious but also has underlying significance to todays world, you should definitely check it out.

4 stars

I was so interested in this book when I read synopsis, but this turned out to be one of the greatest disappointments. He book lacks depth, variety of eloquence, even during sex scenes we see few phrases constantly repeating throughout the book (“orgasms washed over her”, “now it’s my turn to return the favor”...)... first half of the book is nothing but Maggie escaping convent to have sex with Alex, and even that wasn’t skillfully written.
I won’t be posting this review on Goodreads, it stays only for NetGalley and BoldStrokesBooks, because I don’t want to be public on Goodreads and influence the sales with such poor opinion of mine.

If you're looking for erotica then MJ Williamz certainly knows how to write that. I found myself a bit bored with the sex scenes they were a bit repetitive. Reading the brief I thought this is a real taboo theme that I would enjoy reading but it the book didn't live up to my exception. Maggie gave no thought before jumping into bed with Alex, surely after taking a vow for 20 years she would have thought a bit more about it and been torn with her emotions....Just saying

This was a a good romance. Sister Mary Margaret is struggling with her faith and her desire for one of her parishioners, Maryann Fosters but in the book the name change is Alex so in your synopsis you need to change that. Through out the book she struggle with staying in the convent or being with Alex there are some great love scenes.