(ARC from NetGalley) We've got a crime-fighting, lesbian nun ya'll! Although I loved the main character of Sister Holiday, the actual plot fell a bit flat. The flashbacks were (lowkey) trauma porn and the present mystery wasn't really all that mysterious.
Fast-paced and funny, so I'm interested to see what's next.

If you really love a voice-y character-driven mystery, this is the book for you.

At first I was in love with this book about an irreverent nun. But as I kept reading, I found that Sister Holiday just spent too much time being irreverent and telling me about her life, and not nearly enough time solving the mystery.

This book was atmospheric and did have a lot of character development (in the case of Sister Holiday) but I began to lose interest in the mystery and found myself skimming.

Margot Douaihy is an interesting writer and I'd be happy to read another of her books, but if this is a series, I'm not sure it's the best fit for me.

I was thrilled to receive an ARC of Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy. From the cover to the blurb, I was immediately intrigued and could not wait to pick this up. While this review comes late (after its publication), I am still equally thrilled to have been trusted to read it before hitting the shelves.

As someone who grew up as a non-practicing Catholic, I was very drawn to Sister Holiday. I cannot praise Douaihy enough for writing about someone who is often seen as faithless with so much care and grace. Sister Holiday’s faith felt so real and gentle as opposed to overbearing. Her faith, connection, and understanding of God were her own and she cherished it as it was, as opposed to “preaching” it. The book was very much that way and I often forgot the main character was a nun.

I would be lying if I said Sister Holiday and Nina’s past, as well as Sister Holiday’s growing interest in Rosemary, didn’t intrigue me more than the crime/plot itself. However, I was still thoroughly intrigued and invested.

Margot Douaihy’s writing was lovely! I highlighted so many bits and pieces and will definitely pick up any and all of her future books!

Sadly I'll be DNFing this at 31%.

I think the writing style in this just doesn't match my personal tastes and that the sudden drift from present time to past memories does a real disservice to the story.

I'd be really interested in the plot of the fire and the aftermath and then boom we're to where her brother is attacked. It's just jarring and disconnected.

This has a lot of promise, but needs tighter editing.

Dnf at 50%. I just couldn’t get into the mind of this character. Her motivations were super unclear to me. I will try again, but for now I’m settling on a 3 to be fair. I think the writing is good, but maybe this one just isn’t for me.

I was excited when I was approved to get an advance copy of this book through netgalley.com as I was intrigued to read about a crime solving nun!

At Saint Sebastian's school in New Orleans, there is a tragic fire, but then it's determined it wasn't an accident and the first keep happening. Sister Holiday decides to help with the investigation and it soon has her not only questioning students, colleagues, and her fellow nuns, but also feeling like she may be being framed for the fires.

I found the parts of the story about Sister Holiday's backstory the most compelling part of the story. Hearing about her family, what happened to her mother, her relationships, time in a band, and how she came to be a nun kept me engaged even as the as the investigation and reveal of the 'whodunnit' fell a bit flat. I would definitely read a follow-up that featured Sister Holiday!

I really liked the idea of this - what doesn’t sound exciting about a queer, chain smoking, tattooed nun with a ~past, who’s also a super sleuth?
I don’t think the premise was executed very well. Personally I found myself bored and while I didn’t predict the ending, I also didn’t feel surprised or excited. I feel like the “Sister Holiday is so badass and different and badass” became a bit tiring at times. It was a good enough read overall but I generally didn’t feel very compelled to pick it up.

This book is about a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed queer nun, Sister Holiday, who tries to understand who set the school she teaches at on fire... Especially as more and more fires are appearing, and someone seems to be framing Sister Holiday... We also get to learn about who she was before becoming a nun, living a very queer and ver punk life.

Although some elements of this story are quite difficult to read about (please check trigger warnings), I did want to keep reading more about Sister Holiday and what was going on.

I'll admit I felt like I could have cared a bit more... There was a little something that felt distant, like i couldn't quite connect.
I'm not a huge fan of going back into the past to find out more about how people got to be who they are today. I'm always wanting to just get back to the present story, which is a shame because I actually feel like the backstory here, is actually much more interesting than the present one ...

Thank you to Netgalley and Zando for this ARC. This was a super fun and great read! I loved everything about this story and Sister Holiday was such a wonderful character. Scorched Grace is a debut and I’m obsessed with it! It seems like this will be a murder mystery series and I’m so here for it.

Scorched Grace is a mystery about a queer nun who takes it upon herself to investigate an arson -- quite a premise! This book delivers on its promises: it's intriguing, atmospheric, and it somehow manages to make the whole queer nun thing work without feeling like a gimmick. That said, I'm not much of a mystery/thriller person, so I didn't enjoy this as much as some likely will. I'd recommend this to anyone who thinks the premise sounds right up their alley.

Well, I'm sobbing. That last paragraph. Damn.
Sister Holiday is everything I needed her to be. She's feisty, brilliant, and HOT. I'm a big fan. BIG FAN. Loved the New Orleans vibes, and the array of characters were well-developed and eclectic. I almost rated it 3 stars because it isn't exactly what I was thinking it would be, but that's my fault for going in with too many expectations. It deserves 4 stars, especially the second half. Now I will patiently await the second installment. I. AM. HERE. FOR. IT. 4 stars.

I really liked the premise of this novel. It started out a bit slow, but I’m glad I stayed with it. Towards the end, the pace picked up. One thing that will stay with me is that people are complicated.

Thank you to NetGalley, Zando Projects, and Gillian Flynn Books for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Sister Holiday left behind her life in Brooklyn after a string of personal tragedies, fleeing to the only place that would take her, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood at Saint Sebastian's Catholic boarding school in New Orleans. Sister Holiday threw herself into her vows and her work as the music teacher at Sait Sebastian's. Everything was going well until the school was struck with a string of arsons. Sister Holiday, perhaps due to her own past, takes it upon herself to find the arsonist and stop their path of destruction.

When I heard that this book was about a tattooed, punk rock, queer nun I had to pick it up. Margot Douaihy did a great job of creating a complex, dynamic character in her creation of Sister Holiday. The diametrically opposing pieces of her life as a queer punk rocker and as a nun made for a very interesting dynamic. The interesting characters kept the story compelling even when the plot was suffering.

I found the book's atmosphere to be a bit one-dimensional. Historic Catholic boarding schools offer a lot of ambiance and symbolism that wasn't quite tapped into. The bones were there, but severely underutilized.

The mystery portion of discovering the arsonist fell completely flat in my opinion. Sister Holiday's actions in her "investigation" (if you can call it that) were misguided at best and completely irrational at worst. The motivations of the arson perpetrator were also completely devoid of logic and not appropriately woven into the story. That made the ah-ha moment in the book's final pages extremely unsatisfying despite the dramatics involved.

Scorched Grace was a really interesting concept, but I wish it would have been executed a bit better. It had a lot of potential, but some of the pieces of an engaging mystery were missing. The unique characterization of Sister Holiday saved an otherwise mediocre mystery.

Crossposted to Goodreads at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5373921242

Scorched Grace was a really fun read!! (despite the plot literally being arson and death investigation). I was really intrigued by the book even before reading, especially the queer punk tattooed chain smoker Sister Holiday as the main character, and it definitely didn't disappoint. However, I felt the mystery plot & character exploration weren't that well connected. It's still a pretty easy, fun, and delightful read. though!

This novel takes imagery we know, and the tropes we thought would be true, and turns them on their head. As the story unfolds you see the characters unfold unto their full humanity. While we see the narrative from Sister Holiday’s point of view this offers a rich and nuanced view of the other characters in the novel, and allows us a glimpse of the lives we may be passing everyday on the street. And as much as this is a murder mystery, it is also a mosaic of contemporary fiction, queer commentary, and the turmoil of an identity crisis. 4/5

I cannot wait to recommend this book to mystery readers at our library. Looking forward to the next in the series already!

Sister Holiday is not like other nuns - she’s queer, covered in tattoos, and full of spunk. When a series of fires rips through Saint Sebastian and it begins to look like someone is trying to frame her, Sister Holiday takes it upon herself to protect her home and find the bad guys herself.

This was an engaging read and Sister Holiday was an interesting character to follow. The story cuts back and forth between Holiday’s present day life in the convent and some of the pivotal moments in her past that helped her get to where she is now. The writing was beautiful and descriptive without being overwrought. You can tell the author has a background in poetry. We were introduced to a lot of characters that didn’t seem to add much to the story, so at times the story did lag a but, but overall this was a great start to a new series.

Thank you to Zando, Gillian Flynn and NetGalley for a review copy. I can’t wait to see what mystery Sister Holiday tackles next!

I requested this book after seeing it featured on the Today Show. It sounded interesting. A sleuthing nun (I'm Catholic) in New Orleans (my neck of the woods), who tries to solve arson and murder at the Catholic school she teaches at (whodunnit!).

What I wasn't ready for were the all the flashbacks to her life before the convent and all the lesbian sex. This is heavily LGBTQ and it really took away from the mystery-adventure for me. I think this may be the first book in a new series, and this is probably the reason for so much exploration of Sister Holiday's past. Every time she started wool-gathering about her bad-ass lesbian rocker past, family drama, etc. I was like, "Get back to the plot!"

Maybe future books will focus more on the mystery/plot and less on main character exploration. I'm still unsure if Sister Holiday was an actual private investigator at any point. So, as Sister Holiday is trying to track down a murdery arsonist she is also processing her complicated past drama. I almost DNF'd at around 50% done because of the constant shifting between her inner turmoil and the actual plot.

This also reinforced my distaste for New Orleans. The book focuses on the worst aspects of the city (oppressive heat, excessive pollution, out of control crime, generational poverty) and its residents (who are resigned to yet resentful of all of the aforementioned aspects of the city). It's sadly, quite accurate. In this book, even the nuns are sus.

This just wasn't my cup of tea. I couldn't find a character to identify with and everybody was mean/rude to everyone else. I didn't like ANYONE in this book., even Sister Holiday was hard to root for at times.

3.5 stars rounded up

A really fun (despite the subject matter at times), unique novel with an interesting protagonist. Loved that she was a queer nun, solid dialogue, good story. Admittedly, Holiday could have done with some intense therapy rather than joining a nunnery, but I suppose that would be a whole other novel. We all deal with trauma in our own ways, and I found this intense but believable. I will say that I cottoned on to the arsonist very early on, though I didn't know their motivation (and I still didn't fully "get" it when explained, though it was realistic in many ways).

This book was very quirky and unexpected in a lot of ways, which is why I've upped my score here. I feel like a lot of novels follow a prescribed formula that gets dull and uninspiring, but Douaihy did a great job at keeping me on my toes here.

Just to add: I can totally see this being turned into a mini-series or something. Heather Matarazzo as Holiday and Lily Tomlin as Sister Honor in my mind. Still working out the rest of the casting!

A queer punk nun investigates arson in New Orleans! Literally what else do I need to say about this book to convince you to read it? I thoroughly enjoyed this well-constructed mystery and its wonderfully charismatic narrator, and I definitely recommend it.

Sister Holiday is a nun and a music teacher at Saint Sebastian’s School – until the school is targeted by an arsonist, and she decides to add “amateur detective” to her already-unconventional persona. She was a wonderfully faceted, compelling narrator, and such a unique voice; her story was engaging in both the present and in the occasional flashbacks to her past. I do wish that some of the side characters had been a little more fleshed out, as I think it would have added some good layering to the story, but it was a relatively minor complaint.

The mystery at the center of the plot was very well-done; the end reveal was unexpected though not impossible to figure out (I got it, but I am a seasoned reader of mysteries!) and it didn’t experience any midway “lulls,” which is a common problem in mysteries. Once I picked this up, I didn’t want to put it down!

All in all, definitely recommended, and I am very much looking forward to whatever Douaihy does next. Thank you so much to Zando Projects/Gillian Flynn Books and Netgalley for the ARC!