I loved the premise of this book but had a hard time getting into it. I did end up finishing and may try the sequel.

3.25

I was initially drawn to this book because of this gorgeous cover. The smoking nun with the stained glass style art is absolutely stunning. And then I read that the main character is a queer punk nun and amateur sleuth and I knew I had to read it.

I think this is a pretty solid debut and I really liked the first half of it but it sort of fell apart for me as it continued. I think it was partially because of the pacing and partially because I struggled through the mystery elements of the plot. I think this does a better job of acting as a character study and exploring themes of institutionalized religion than it does as a mystery. I also started to find Sister Holiday's "I can serve God by solving crimes because the police clearly can't do their jobs" internal monologue become grating as the book continued, which I think also caused my enjoyment to wan because at that point I was reading more for Sister Holiday than for the mystery.

Overall, I think this is a pretty solid debut and I liked the unique take on amateur sleuth main characters, and I am interested in picking up the sequel but it's not a high priority.

'Scorched Grace' is a captivating mystery novel set in New Orleans, featuring Sister Holiday, a unique and unconventional nun. With its intriguing plot and memorable characters, 'Scorched Grace' offers a refreshing twist on the traditional mystery genre.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

In "Scorched Grace" by Margot Douaihy, Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, and boldly queer nun, steps into the role of an amateur sleuth when Saint Sebastian's School is targeted by a shocking arson spree. Dissatisfied with the official response, Sister Holiday embarks on a determined quest to unveil the mysterious attacker, navigating a twisty path of suspicion and secrets in the oppressive New Orleans heat. The novel, a thrilling debut in the hard-boiled genre, keeps readers guessing until the very end as Sister Holiday confronts her own checkered past in the pursuit of justice. Douaihy's series promises an exciting journey into the chaotic and mysterious world of Sister Holiday's unconventional sleuthing.

This is a fun take on the stereotypical mystery novel. It's fast-paced and kept me interested, but I think I was expecting a little more from this book, though I did have a good time with it.

We know I love some crime fiction. This was such a. Fun spin. The way that Douaihy peels back the layers of Holiday creates intrigue, revealing a character that is both expected and unexpected.

I think it’s important to add that being an atheist did not detract from my enjoyment of this book.

The ARC had some factual inaccuracies about diabetes and insulin that I hope we’re corrected before the release. If not, it could dangerously misinform readers about properly treating hypoglycemia (please do not give someone in hypoglycemic shock insulin!).

genuinely such an incredible & interesting piece of storytelling absolutely loved the storyline and character. definitely recommend to friends that are interested in mystery

I'm not going to lie, when I started this book I was a little worried. I was listening to it as an audiobook and at first with all of the talk of Catholicism I was pretty sure I was not going to be enjoying this book. As the mystery progressed I definitely got into it even though all of the Catholicism talk still wasn't my favorite, the mystery did suck me in. And by the end, now I need to hear the second book in the series. I think I'm going to do the same thing and listen to it as an audiobook because I enjoyed that medium. I absolutely love Sister Holiday, she's an awesome character and I need more from her.

Sister Holiday is not your conventional nun. She's covered in tattoos, she used to be in a rock band, oh and did I mention that she's a lesbian? After a tragedy in her life, she begins the process of joining The Sisters of The Sublime Blood in New Orleans, which would also mean she would be the music teacher at the Saint Sebastian School. She is settling in, her students are starting to drive her crazy, and then all of a sudden there is an arson at the school resulting in a coworker's death. After more fires and more death and what looks like someone trying to frame Sister Holiday, she begins to work with the fire inspector to try and solve the case. It won't go into any details because I don't want to spoil any of the twists and turns because they were great, I really enjoyed all of the different aspects of the story and the way the author wove them all together. Personally one of the biggest indicators of a good mystery novel is whether or not I can accurately guess the ending, or how much of the ending I can guess. I didn't guess any of the ending. Not one bit, even after the twist I definitely thought I was still somewhat right and was waiting for something else that didn't come. This author definitely put together a good mystery novel and that is what makes me want to listen to the second in this series immediately.

This was one of my most anticipated reads for 2023 and it just did not hit. The premise is such a great idea but poorly executed. Did someone who did read the book write the blurb? IDK a huge disappointment.

The main character kept me reading through the whole book. She really captivated me and the author did a good job at creating this real juxtaposition of a nun.

I was immediately drawn by the cover when I first saw it (idk, I find nuns in fiction so intriguing?) but the story itself didn't do much for me. I'm inclined to read more from the author in the future, but I think the structure of the book and writing could use some work.

A fast-paced story set in a Catholic school in New Orleans, starring an extremely flawed nun whose past may be catching up with her. I found the characters really fun to read about, the setting was great, and the mystery was satisfying if a bit dramatic at times. I’m excited to see where the rest of the series goes.

I absolutely loved this book!! I couldn’t put it down.
I just loved all the characters. I highly recommend this book.

Sister Holiday has a bad Habit…she’s a punk, pious Poirot pursuing a pyro in this new take on the hard-boiled genre.

After escaping Brooklyn and the sins of her past, Sister Holiday seeks refuge with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood in New Orleans. Her peaceful existence is soon shattered when a series of arson attacks occur in the school attached to the convent.

As an atheist, I was intrigued by the thought of a chain smoking, heavily tattooed, lesbian nun - a flawed hero, relatable in her mistakes and her humanity. I find it hard to reconcile how someone can seemingly work against their own interests, and thought this may give me some insight (disappointingly it did not). I do enjoy the imagery and iconography of the Catholic Church though, so while I can’t particularly relate to the call of faith, I appreciate the aesthetic (it also makes for a stunning cover).

The story skips around, told in flashbacks and present day, and this type of storytelling encapsulates the stifling atmosphere of its setting - this is jazz, if jazz was a book. The heat and humidity of New Orleans is palpable-Douaihy is a talented writer who has a way with words-metaphors come as thick and heady as the Louisiana air.

Despite all of this, I didn’t enjoy Scorched Grace as much as I should have. The story really starting moving once the shorter chapters began- for me, the identity of the arsonist and their intentions was secondary to Sister Holiday’s test of faith. The whodunnit was not as interesting as the process of understanding how Sister Holiday came to be living as a nun, and how she grapples with the contradictions in her life. Perhaps if I was more invested in the mystery, I would have enjoyed it more.

Scorched Grace is a fever dream of a novel that explores the complexities of faith, religion, sexuality, place, belonging, past, redemption, trauma and healing. It is a critique of incarceration and the prison system, the treatment of black and queer people, institutional violence, generational trauma, feminism and patriarchy. It is a lot - and another reason why I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. It is very difficult to broach so many topics and give them all the attention they deserve.

This appears to be the first in a series, so it will be interesting to see how the character and writing develops from here.

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

I feel like a bit of a wanker for saying this, but I think I was more interested in this book than I ultimately liked it. It might just be because I’m not the biggest contemporary mystery reader (I like classic noir and cosy detective nonsense) so it didn’t have the right genre places to go in my brain. Don’t get me wrong, it intrigued me. But it also frustrated me. And while it definitely positions itself as a kind of modern noir (the heroine incorrectly notes that Philip Marlowe is the best of the private eyes, when it is clearly Sam Spade) its resolution ended up feeling a little … random, almost? Not necessarily the revelation of the culprit but how the heroine got there, even though I recognise that noir detectives aren’t methodologically transparent in the way more cosy or procedural detectives are.

In any case, the book is narrated in deliberately anarchic fashion by its protagonist Sister Holiday, a queer, tattooed, former punk-rock disaster now turned nun. She works for a small—dwindling even—progressive order in New Orleans (the only order that would take her) but the peaceful existence she has carved out amongst her three sisters is brought to an abrupt end up when the school attached the nunnery catches fire and a body plummets from an upstairs window. Sister Holiday immediately cast herself in the role of sleuth and, well, things proceed from there.

Part mystery, part confession, part meditation on the nature of faith and identity, Scorched Grace definitely carried me along. I did kind of figure out whodunnit, long before Sister Holiday, but only by using the rather tawdry tools of meta-narrative i.e. there was no-one else it could be who would feel thematically appropriate and emotionally satisfying. And even then I remained kind of vague on the whys of it: I mean motives are given, both secular and divine, but I failed to see how the undertaken actions (burning shit down and murdering folks) were supposed to address the stated problem or bring about the perpetrator’s intended result. Or maybe the point was, they were just bananas. Except that’s a bit of a meh conclusion to a mystery.

To be fair, though, Scorched Grace is as much a character study than a mystery. And on those grounds it really succeeds – I was as much compelled by the mystery that is Sister Holiday herself and the fascinating contradictions of her character (she’s profane yet devout, hard-bitten yet loving) than whatever was going on with somebody setting schools on fire. The narrative voice, whether it’s talking about faith or love or New Orleans itself is so distinct:

Take this:

“The sky was a vibrant mottle of blue and white, threaded with the inflections of birdsong. Green parrots, robins, and silver mourning doves incanted their secret codes.”

Or this:

“But our bodies are holy and meant to be shared, for a time, at least. Jesus was given to us in the form of a human. During Communion, the wafer transforms into Jesus’s body and blood on our tongues. Transubstantiation. Inking my body was also holy. Sure, the needle hurt sometimes. But it should hurt. Salvation required sacrifice.”

I think this is the first book in what will be a series (it carries the tagline A Sister Holiday Mystery) so it’s probably unfair of me to feel somewhat underserved by some aspects of the book. There are plotlines that don’t seem to go anywhere (what happened with the two queer boys who were sleeping in the school—were they okay?!), characters who seem significant, are there for a scene or two and then seem to be forgotten, and climatic scenes that end up feeling rushed and inconclusive (like when Sister Holiday’s ex shows up at the end). And I honestly can’t tell to what degree these aspects of the story were, uh, bugs or features. Whether it was simply ambition escaping execution, storylines/relationships intended to be continued in future books, or things deliberately left unresolved and uncertain because noir takes place in an inherently disordered universe (even if your concept of that universe has a god in it).

Speaking of god, I would also have appreciated a bit more about Sister Holiday’s faith here and there. I’ve read other reviews which seem to have wanted her to be more radical/iconoclastic but I kind of appreciated the way that she was, uh, really very fucking Catholic. She says herself that “Religion is like art, we all get to make our own interpretations” and there’s a degree to which she does, in fact, live this—her god is a ‘they’, she never says the Our Father, only the Hail Mary—but trauma, suffering and even punishment are inescapably at the core of her faith, even if she also finds peace, purpose and meaning in it too. I think where I slightly came unstuck on a purely personal level is that, at one point, she acknowledges that she belongs to one of the most oppressive organisations in the world. And while it’s not for me to, like, judge either real people or fictional ones for their choices I kind of wanted to know more about how she reconciled that or, for that matter, didn’t reconcile that. Just having the quiet bit said out loud in the actual narration kind of a drew attention to an elephant in the room I would otherwise have politely ignored for the sake of the story.

I don’t think it helped that I couldn’t tell whether I was supposed to think Sister Holiday was a good sleuth or a bad one, somewhere in the middle, or if it mattered at all. She tells us that she’s sleuth and does, indeed, notice a few pieces of evidence the police—who may or may not be useless—miss. But she also tampers with crime scenes and evidence, doesn’t follow up on obvious leads, fails to really put anything together and works out what’s going by what feels like sheer chance (divine intervention?) at the end.

I should also probably mention that is, you know, terribly gritty. Violence, sexual violence, addiction, homophobia, oppression and alienation of all kinds: I honestly got so, no pun intended, burned out on it all that I kind of stopped feeling anything by the halfway point and had become so unshockable that even the final revelation of what led Sister Holiday to become a nun came across as overwrought to the point of absurdity. I mean, it was thematic, yes. But also, wait, what? You did what?

The other thing that occasionally sort of caught me off guard—though it shouldn’t have—was what came across to me as Sister Holiday’s very .. binarist, I suppose, view of men and women. I know her god is a ‘they’ but she speaks of men and women in very absolute terms throughout the book.

"Men fucked like grammar schoolteachers diagramming sentences: This goes here, and now that goes there. I’d rather die than be restrained by a dude. But women were unpredictable, like trying to tame a flame."

Or

"God is perfection, even in devastation. This might be the only thing I’m sure of: God is especially alive in women."

I’m not saying this is wrong or bad. I have queer friends who talk like this too. It’s just—as someone who sort of dwells in the middle of things as fluidly as possible—it is personally confusing to me. On top of which I really hate the fact that the current cultural context has made it impossible to take this kind of discourse at face value. Although let me emphasise that it is not the discourse in itself that is the problem; it is the way TERFism has positioned itself, or been positioned, relative to feminism. In any case, this is very much a your mileage my vary type situation and—given how far out of my lane I am right now—I would like to return to my car.

Oh, and I learned it’s very hot in New Orleans and everybody is sweating constantly.

Anyway: complicated feelings for a complicated book.

This was an interesting read! I enjoyed the ride of twists and turns as our very unique main character tried to solve crimes. The one thing I had a bit of trouble believing is her inner monologue. It doesn’t really come across that she has really changed much since joining the convent. Overall it was a quick read and well written.

Chainsmoking Queer Nun with a past and a penchant for justice was not on my bingo card for this year, but this FMC was one of a kind. Can't wait for the next installment!

The idea of this spoke to me a lot more than the actual execution of it. The writing is kind of dense to me, and I just generally was not a fan of the writing style. I'm also not religious myself, so I don't really relate to that aspect of the story (I didn't think it would play a big part). In any case I had to give up on this, not because it's horrible or anything, I can just tell it is not for me and I will therefore not enjoy it

I, like many others, have been (im)patiently waiting for a new Gillian Flynn book. And while I still want something new from her, new mysteries from her publishing imprint are the next best thing.

Scorched Grace is a mystery about a string of arsons in New Orleans. Sister Holiday, a queer nun with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood, is the unwitting detective who finds herself caught up in the investigation after witnessing several of the fires.

This book is impossible to put down and I actually ended up switching to the audio version halfway through just so I wouldn’t have to stop reading. Margot Douaihy does a great job of connecting Sister Holiday’s personal past to the crimes of the present which almost makes it feel like you’re reading two expertly interwoven books in one volume.

I believe this is the first book in a planned series and I am totally on board with reading more about Sister Holiday. I can’t wait to see where her story goes!

Scorched Grace is out now. Thanks to Gillian Flynn Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.