Scorched Grace: A Sister Holiday Mystery (Sister Holiday Mysteries, 1)

A USA TODAY Bestseller - A New York Times, Apple Books, and The Guardian Best Crime Novel of the Year - An Indie Next Pick - Winner of the Pinckley Prize for Crime Fiction and the Saints & Sinners LGBTQ+ Festival Emerging Writer Award - Longlisted for the Mass Book Award - A Finalist for the ITW Thrillerfest, New England Book, Left Coast Crime "Lefty", and Anthony Awards - Best Author by Boston Magazine

Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun, puts her amateur sleuthing skills to the test in this "unique and confident" debut crime novel (Gillian Flynn).

When Saint Sebastian's School becomes the target of a shocking arson spree, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and their surrounding New Orleans community are thrust into chaos.

Patience is a virtue, but punk rocker turned nun Sister Holiday isn't satisfied to just wait around for officials to return her home and sanctuary to its former peace, instead deciding to unveil the mysterious attacker herself. Her investigation leads her down a twisty path of suspicion and secrets, turning her against colleagues, students, and even fellow Sisters along the way. And to piece together the clues of this high-stakes mystery, she must at last reckon with the sins of her own past.

An exciting start to a bold series that breathes new life into the hard-boiled genre, Scorched Grace is a fast-paced and punchy whodunnit that will keep readers guessing until the very end.

Now with an exclusive sneak peek at the second Sister Holiday mystery!

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320 pages

Average rating: 6.12

24 RATINGS

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blewballoon

Nov 21, 2024

2/10 stars

I struggled with this one. I really wanted to like it, I went to Catholic school and I knew some pretty cool nuns. There was a lot of potential in the premise. I thought this would be a fun time, despite being a murder mystery. It wasn't fun, it wasn't funny, and it didn't have anything new or interesting to say. It was just a series of awful people either doing awful things or having awful things done to them while the author describes how hot and humid it is every other sentence. (Do check the content warnings, there is a lot of dark stuff here.) The book is written in a stream of conscious sort of way, so I would be in a scene and then three paragraphs later the narrator was still musing, reminiscing about the past in a vague way, and talking about how hot it is, and I would have forgotten what was even happening. This was made worse by listening on audiobook and not being able to just flip back or skip over, but I do think Mara Wilson did a good job narrating the material she was given. Sister Holiday makes incredibly bad choices, is selfish and hard to root for, and doesn't really figure anything out that isn't completely obvious. The word "sleuthing" is heavily overused by her, especially considering that she doesn't actually do any. I would say the diversity is good, but because the diverse people are flat or terrible, I'm not sure the representation does anyone a service.

Maddieholmes

Aug 28, 2023

6/10 stars

Content warning for fire, death, medical scenarios, drug/alcohol misuse, sexual assault/rape, threats, and related topics. I wanted to like this novel because of the main character, but she wasn't enough to overcome the rest of the novel. The secondary characters weren't developed, the dialogue is so repetitive, and there are theological musings on every other page. I don't think I'll be reading the sequel.

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