About This Book
Praise opens with a woman rebuilding herself after years of emotional neglect—quietly starved for validation, stumbling into a job that upends everything she thought she wanted. What unfolds is a charged, complicated power dynamic between two people who know they shouldn't want each other, for reasons that compound the further you read. Sara Cate isn't interested in easy desire here; the stakes are social, psychological, and deeply personal, rooted in the specific ache of someone who has never been told she's enough.
What sets Praise apart is how Cate handles interiority. The first-person narration is raw without being overwrought—the protagonist's internal negotiations feel genuine rather than performed, which makes the emotional payoff land harder than a steamier, less grounded book might. The age-gap and taboo elements aren't used for shock; they're used structurally, to raise the cost of every choice. Cate writes heat that is also character revelation, and the result is a romance that reads faster than it should, pulling you forward not just with anticipation but with actual investment in who these people become.
