You know what they say about family. Blood is thicker than water. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. A house divided cannot stand. Margie is the keeper of her family’s secrets. Six sisters and one brother. Billions in assets. Generations of malfeasance. And one heartbreaking secret three people keep. Margie. Her father, Declan. And Drew–the man she loves. You know what they say … Declan.
And Drew–the man she loves.
You know what they say about secrets.
Three can keep them if two are Drazens.
There’s never been a Drazen who went down without a fight.
And there’s never been one who didn’t fight for love.
more
Omgosh y’all, MARGIE EFFING ROCKS!!!!!! She IS PHENOMENAL!!!!! You have GOT to read this book!!!! CD Reiss blew my effing mind!!!!!!
Margie will eclipse every expectation you have as she seamlessly navigates these waters. This duet was showed us just how strong and cunning a character can be. Margie exudes power grace and complexity that is mesmerizing. She has boundless drive to shield and protect when she sees fit and nothing will stray her from her path. Prepare yourself for more of CD Reiss’ in uncompromising greatness as she takes us through this unparalleled journey.
I voluntarily read an advanced reader copy of this book.
Wow! I am overwhelmed by C.D. Reiss’ highly emotional Sacred Sins. Since the conclusion of the author’s Submission series, fans have been clamoring for more of the Drazen family. She delivers tenfold with her Saint Margie duet. Sacred Sins is the duet’s dramatic, twisty conclusion. Margie’s story is tortured, beautiful and emotional.
Sacred Sins is told primarily in the present; however, it does start in the past and make a couple time leaps to give readers some needed backstory. The majority of the novel takes place in parallel to Monica and Jonathan’s story in C.D. Reiss’ Submission series, and it is told from the tortured perspective of Margie Drazen. Margie’s life is filled with secrets, regrets, and longing. Her long ago wild fling with rockers Stratford Giliam and Indiana Andrew McCaffrey is a secret she is struggling to keep buried.
I loved the insight into the nefarious patriarch, Declan Drazen. He is still amoral, but you see his attachment to his long-suffering wife and children in a different light. Ms. Reiss made him just empathetic enough for readers to like him a little (and then feel guilty for doing so).
More standout secondary characters are Will Stanton and his adorable daughter, Hannah. I have enjoyed Will’s cameo appearances in other books, and it was a delight to get to know this character better.
All that I can say about the plot is that it is fast paced and chockfull of action. Without ruining the experience, it is safe to say that Margie has her hands full! The woman’s intelligence and gamesmanship has taken her to the top, and her big heart is going to keep her there.
To enjoy Sacred Sins, it is essential to read book one, Secret Sins. This duet is a great place for new-to-the-author readers to jump in. I loved every word of both books in this duet. Brava Ms. Reiss—you’ve created characters that readers care about and a scintillating story line to keep them up all night reading.
God I loved this woman, Margie the oldest Drazen is as hard as nails and a force not to cross as she is a fixer of every single sin and secret in this family and I thought she made impossible choices and sacrificed herself to the point of no going back and we get to see her soft side that only a few ever get to see, I felt so bad for her but choices right.
I loved the connection that Indy and she had couple made in heaven they were beautiful together had each others backs etc…. The dialogue was amazing sucked you right back in to the Drazens world and It was perfection in every single word.
This book is not a standalone. You must read Secret Sins before Sacred Sins. This review will be spoiler free.
Margie Drazen is the oldest of seven. She’s passionate, she’s loyal, she’s smart, she’s confident, she’s her family’s fixer and she has a secret. Her inner turmoil and constant guilt are what drives her to be the fixer. She has loved and she has lost. She’s complex and has many layers. I understand her plight and her stoic nature because how could you not. Her inner conflicts, her inner wants and desires are all at odds with her reality and she must muddle through the brackish water in order to stay afloat.
Indiana Andrew McCaffrey, aka Indy and Drew, is the man who hold all the cards and holds Margie’s heart as well. He knows Margie’s secret and is her champion, but he can’t take Margie out of her family. He knows the lengths Margie’s father, Declan, would go to in order to manipulate any situation to go his way. And as in life, sometimes timing doesn’t work in your favor and much needed living and maturity are what brings clarity to view.
The Drazen Family is not for the faint of heart. The sins of the father have ripple effects on all his children. They are all off the charts but the siblings have an abiding love for one another no matter what. When this author writes about the Drazen Family, there is a cadence of passion, intense feelings, dastardly deeds and poetic and lyrical words that touch the essence of love and desire. The brilliance of the author to weave simultaneous stories sings of the dedication and magical mind that CD Reiss possesses.
I can’t say enough how much I loved Margie’s story and of the ending of her story. Margie’s story will grab your heart and hold it hostage. I held my breath a time or two but the pure euphoria of the epilogue was total perfection. Bravo to CD on being true to Margie. You made me smile, cry, hold my breath and love beyond reason. You made me want to go back and reread Jonathan, Fiona and Theresa’s stories. I look forward to Carrie and Leanna’s stories where once again you will transport us into Drazen Land.
A Definite Favorite of 2018
It’s Margie’s time to shine! Amazing book!
She has held that family together through thick and thin. She has kept and fixed all the secrets and dalliances for them. This family would not have survived without Margie trying to keep it safe and together despite all the damage her father has done through the years.
All this at the sacrifice of her own happiness. There were two men she loved. One she lost and the other one could not stay and survive her family. Now her past has come back to face her. She must decide how to proceed. Will she give up her second chance at love or will she sacrifice once again? Was the original sacrifice worth it? All family secrets must now be faced and dealt with.
Personal note: I have been waiting for the Drazen patriarch to get his just deserves. You cannot miss this book!
I am voluntarily reviewing this book. Thanks to the author for sharing a copy with me.
So…previously when I read Secret Sins, I made a comment that Margie was one of my favorite Drazens. Now that I’ve finished Sacred Sins, I amend that statement to say that Margie IS my favorite Drazen.
I had SO many questions at the end of Secret Sins. And to go back even further, I really had questions pertaining to Margie and her life while I was reading the Submission series. And now, I’ve got those answers. And answers to questions that managed to pop up in Sacred Sins about things that I somehow overlooked in book 1 and in Jonathan’s series. I had certain things that I really, really wanted to happen, FOR Margie, and TO other people in the story that managed to rub me wrong way. Like…the really wrong way.
Christine has created one of the most interesting characters I have come across in a long time. Meeting Margie in the Submission series, my first impression of her was that she is a take no bullshit, impenetrable force of a lawyer who manages the whole Drazen family. Then in Secret Sins, I got to see the young Margie, who was already a force to be reckoned with, but also had a soft underbelly that she only left exposed to a very small number of people.
Now, in Sacred Sins, the nails in the armor she hammered over that soft underbelly are slowly starting to come loose as more and more Drazen drama rears its ugly head, and revelations that shake her to the core come to light. How is she going to manage all that is thrown at her?
Christine manages to evoke every emotion known to man out of me during my read. I laughed, I cried, I got pissed, I got scared, I got swoony, my heart melted, my claws came out and I wished a couple of times that I owned a pair of steel toed boots so I could kick a certain someone right in their lying, cheating balls.
I STILL have a question or two rolling around in my mind. Maybe if Christine decides to write about any of the other Drazen sisters (CARRIE) those last few curiosities I have will get answered. After all, you can’t read about one Drazen without the whole damn clan being involved.
I feel like an epic series has been laid to rest. I hope that’s not the case since the Drazens are one messed up bunch and I’m sure there’s a ton of fascinating stories to be told. But for now? Mischief managed.
“You’re killing me.”
“You’re not dead yet.”
“I’m practically a doornail.”
Well I’m effing Dodo CD!! #$%&@
This book is a gigantic Heart shredder. Prepare to be annhilated! No other words. this book is a punch in the throat, a chokehold of emotions. It will smash you, scrunch you under the boot, stomp on your heart and then start afresh!! I was emotionally exhausted and drained. There’s a limit to what a human heart can endure and CD just kept pushing the limits. A giant exhale at the end is all I’m gonna tell you.
The story of one woman -Margaret Drazen and two men. One she lets go & one who comes back. She chose a car which was needed but she left the car which she wanted.
I was falling down a rabbit hole and only Drew could catch me. He was the North Star. The skies spun, but he was still and steady. The point of connection between myself and the rest of the world.
She faced a fork and her life was pushed in a new direction so far away, her old music is just a faint memory now.
What Ifs and Could’ves pockmark Margie’s thoughts nowadays like battle scars. A love lost, a life on automation and a barely beating mechanical heart. What happens when the past is needed and required NOW ? Her bunkered soul which was buried under concrete, threatens to blast open and old ghosts have to stumble out.
Once a person hits bottom, Margie, nothing’s scary.
Not death.
Not prison.
Nothing.”
Several heart stopping moments, numerous cursing overlook points and some downright curl-up-and-die twists had me so pissed at CD, I almost had a coronary just reading it.
At the end if book 1, a phone call was an alarm to signal the beginning of the end and that’s where the book picks up from.
While I’d been shacking up with my lover in New York, building a career and a life, my family had been twisting in on itself. Eating its tail. Collapsing in slow motion.
Forget everything you know about the Drazens, esp Margie with a spine of Steele. She’s badass fire extinguisher of the Drazen’s empire, handling things, warding enemies, stomping fires. Now it’s her turn to be in the spotlight or crosshairs. I think she needs constant movement to escape the memories. If mind is busy it won’t stop to rest, the riffs wouldn’t catch her..yanno!!
Her Sin which was a secret for 30 odd years is now sacred to her. She’s holding it close to her heart like a prayer, because she’s virtually down on her knees, scrambling for scraps to put together a Heart!
“Have you ever cared about something besides yourself,Cared so much you gave your life to it ? Ever had it threatened from all sides by people who didn’t understand what you’d sacrificed or what you’d continue to sacrifice?”
Moment of truth ladies…
I cried. Bucketloads !
I cursed. Shitloads !
I begged. Tearloads !
All to no avail. CD just sits on her throne & laughs, watching her readers writhing in pain.
Never expected from a Drazen but a propelling and scintillating story. Dazzles you with larger than life sentiments and magnetic love. Pushes you to keep reading despite running on fumes. It just will realign your perceptions you had about the Mighty Drazens!!
Indy-Cin: once a star, always a star
5 chickens that come home to roost!!
When last we left Margie Drazen in Secret Sins , she allowed the love of her life to leave her, believing that she had to do so for her family. It’s been almost two years since that book was published, and in that time, I have worried for Margie. I have worried mightily.
CD Reiss puts you squarely back in the Drazen world, bringing all of the family together to help Jonathan. Of course, you cannot have eight siblings together – plus their parents – and not have all manner of emotional trauma and angst ensue. But when it’s the Drazens, you turn that trauma and angst up to twelve.
Sacred Sins is part of CD Reiss’s Drazen series, but the only book you absolutely must read before this one is Secret Sins. That’s the only one I read. Yes, there are times when reading Sacred Sins that you realize that there is more information to be had about some of the Drazens, but that lack of knowledge will not hinder your appreciation of Margie’s story in any way. All it will do is stoke a flame that drives you to go purchase the Submission series. You will want to fill in those gaps, but even more importantly, you will want to spend more time with the Drazens, particularly Jonathan.
But the focus here is on Margie, and as you discovered in Secret Sins, Margie merits that attention most completely. She is tenacious, determined, forceful, and loyal. She loves deeply and completely, even when she’s been hurt. She rejects her own happiness if it means Jonathan will be happier because of it. And yet hers is a life of loneliness, regardless of how many siblings she has. That loneliness is her choice, mind you. She has neither wanted nor needed to fill the void left by Indiana Andrew McCaffrey sixteen years ago. It’s almost as if she believes that she is only entitled to one love more than believing that no one else could take his place.
I won’t say more about the plot of this book because you need to savor it. You need to wrap yourself in CD Reiss’s storytelling and revel in the way she draws Margie, the way she develops this complicated, conflicted woman. Margie wants to feel love, even as she has tried to close herself off from it: “My heart was encased in a steel fist. It pounded against the crushing pressure, expanding as the first tightened, pushing against my lungs.” Do you feel the want, the need? “My feelings picked the lock. Stormed into the room and overturned the tables, wrote on the walls, marred the floor.” Oh, Margie. Your feelings deserve to be free, and so do you.
There is hope for Margie. There is possibility.
This is her time, and, thanks to CD Reiss, she gets it.
Scared SINS by CD Reiss is the second book in the Saint Margie Duet. This continues the story of Margaret ‘Margie “Cinnamon- Cin”‘Drazen, Stratford ‘Strat’ Gilliam and Indiana Andrew ‘Indy ‘McCaffrey. You really should read the previous book ‘Secret Sins’ first before reading this one.
Margie is a strong tough women that keeps her family’s secrets and those of her own. This book closes in on how she struggled with those secrets, her feelings and what she is now. Indy and Strat are still working toward their feelings and what they need to do to make it happen along with what they can do to help Margie.
I really wanted this book to see how things were going to play out with them…just makes me want more books by Ms. Reiss.
Sacred Sins left me stunned. I am so sad that some secrets have to stay. But it was also the best duet I have read this year! You have to read Sacred Sins to close 2018 right.
Margie is still keeping her family in line, or fixing what they broke. She is the key holder for the Drazen clan. Jonathan plays a huge part in this story while some more truths come out. When we got towards the ending I could barely breath with all the angst that was flowing through me. I had shed a few tears and had to take a few breaks.
Sacred Sins is a powerful and will emotionally have you tangled through the twists and new turns. Strat still plays a huge part of this story. Margie and Indy have gone through so much and my heart hurts for them with all the years lost. We meet a couple of new characters, and they have a vital role in this game of chess. C.D. Reiss knows how to keep the readers in turmoil, but also knows how to piece them back together in the end.